


The Proximity Problem

by standalone



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: (but the enemies parts are all canon and predate this story), Auror Harry Potter, Conversations, Enemies to Friends to Lovers, Feelings, HEA (probably!), M/M, Marriage Competition, Scars, Sex, Shopkeeper Draco Malfoy, some canon divergence, sudden marriage
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-18
Updated: 2018-06-18
Packaged: 2019-05-24 21:04:23
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 21,588
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14962145
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/standalone/pseuds/standalone
Summary: Come one, come all!reads the announcement.Harry Potter’s ready to marry his perfect match! Will it be you?There's really no reason this should affect Draco at all.





	The Proximity Problem

**Author's Note:**

> So many thanks to [werebear](https://archiveofourown.org/users/werebear), whose beta reads continue to be absolutely invaluable.
> 
> (Please note that it is entirely my own fault that everything's in U.S. English except "arse" and its variants. It was so fun to have a chance to write "arse" that I couldn't hold back.)
> 
> *
> 
> Loosely inspired by [this wild, romantic, and sad real-life story](https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2018/05/23/a-marriage-made-at-the-mall-of-america-nearly-20-years-ago-is-cut-short-sadly-by-cancer/?noredirect=on&utm_term=.516cd9b94e0f).

It's not like he didn't know it was happening. Merlin. The entire Wizarding world knew. It was inescapable; you couldn't avoid the spectacle if you fled as far as Tierra del Fuego, as his long-distance correspondence made abundantly obvious. And anyway, why would anyone _want_ to avoid it? This was the news of the month—the year, the decade, even: Harry bloody Potter was getting married. 

On Draco’s fucking birthday. 

For most people, a birthday would have provided a convenient out, but Draco’s friends all had jobs or outstanding arrest warrants, his mother was holed up in Portugal, as was her wont this time of year, and, anyway, his business wouldn’t wait—so he might as well go in to work as usual.

It's true that Draco wasn’t going to actually _attend_ the wedding, but even not attending had become unnecessarily difficult due to Potter’s inconvenient choice of location. Couldn't the savior of life as we knew it have chosen to stage this grand charade somewhere other than in the middle of Diagon Alley, no more than thirty paces from where Draco kept shop?

Malfoy's Rare Potions had, in the last year, had the fortune to relocate into a rather plum space, plumb in the heart of the shopping district, and he couldn't deny this had been marvelous for business—but it also meant he was next-door neighbors with the blasted _Quibbler_ , which, when it came down to it, was really the proximity problem in a nutshell. 

As the story had it—and yes, Draco had the story second-hand, through Blaise, who was there, but Blaise was not _un_ trustworthy in such matters—Potter had been at a wedding this May with Lovegood and crew, and when the eightieth well-meaning aged Weasley relation inquired of him when he would at last be settling down and getting himself married, he'd blown his stack and demanded, with a burnt-crisp attempt at calm that convinced exactly no one, “How about next month? That soon enough for you? Luna, you go right ahead and print that, will you? I’ve got a couple days off at the start of the month. How about we make it June fifth?”

Luna looked at him dubiously. “You’ve had a few, Harry.”

“Print it!” he insisted. “High noon.”

“But...”

“In front of the _Quibbler_ offices, if you don't mind,” he said, green eyes crackling. “If that’s not too much pageantry for you.”

“Harry,” she said again, patting his hand with her left while tugging a quill from her updo with the other. “Of course that’s fine, Harry, the society desk will be thrilled. But darling, whom do you intend to marry?”

“That’s your job,” he said—and on this point, Blaise was quite clear: “I don’t fucking care so long as they’re ready for... for...” He fell quiet for a moment, frustrated at the insufficiency of his words. “For whatever the hell it means to be married to _me_.”

* * *

**5 June**

Despite having less than a month to plan, the _Quibbler_ had gone all in. The garlands of marigolds and roses nearly created a ceiling over the street, with a central dais below festooned with strange and massive bouquets of white-edged gloxinia and purple honeywort.

Pennants flew from posts the length of the alley, buffeted by a charmed breeze to flap fetchingly and draw passersby toward the festive celebration.

Draco, entering his shop particularly early that morning, scowled at the flags and shooed away a sparkling mist of gold dust that swirled around him. He had a batch of Refigurement Potion that had been steeping in a malachite flask for nearly the requisite 62 hours, and therefore the time was rapidly approaching when he must sterilize his nettle sieve and begin its clarification.

He was unlocking the door to the shop when he heard Lovegood’s cheery voice at his back. “Oh, it’s perfect,” she was exclaiming to a crew of young wizards who seemed to be spelling river stones to the buildings’ facades in what appeared to be some sort of druidic pattern. “Everything’s going to go perfectly, with all the luck you’re planning.”

“Luck?” Draco couldn’t help scoffing at this. “You want luck? You know my shop’s just next door.” He had been tinkering with his Felix Felicis formula, substituting a tincture of wild thyme for the usual garden variety, and was quite pleased with the results, which seemed at least equally effective while significantly less susceptible to abuse.

“I know, Draco,” Lovegood said, turning to him with a glint in her eye. “But Harry wouldn’t want the sort of luck you sell. He might think it wasn’t quite on the up and up.”

“Unsporting,” Draco said, channeling his father as he drew out the second syllable. “Right.”

“Stop fussing,” Lovegood admonished. “You’ll be there today, right? I’ve saved seats near the front for all the neighborhood shopkeepers.”

“We’ll see,” said Draco, checking the time. It was nearly 8 a.m. “If you’ll excuse me.”

*

The Refigurement Potion was in the sieve, hissing as it dripped sporadically into its final cauldron, and the shop was tidy, and business was nonexistent. Through the front window, Draco could easily see why. Diagon Alley was so crowded with wedding guests that his shop door was entirely blocked; light only filtered in through the thin section of window that exceeded head height.

Fine. He didn’t need to attend the event, but neither did he need to sulk alone in his shop while a party raged outside.

He flipped the sign in the front window and bolted the door. 

Upstairs, the shop’s tiny office looked over the street and offered a private balcony. Draco often took tea here, when the weather was not inhospitable; he enjoyed the fresh air and the proximity to people without the potentially uncomfortable _interactions_ with people. He kept a small table there, and two chairs. 

The weather today was fine. _Of course the weather’s fine_ , he thought, rolling his eyes. _It’s Harry Potter’s wedding day. It could scarcely choose otherwise._ Pouring himself a cup of tea, he stepped out to the balcony. 

It offered a perfect view. Had he wished, he could probably have auctioned an hour in these seats for a price in the hundreds of galleons each. It was high enough to see over the crowd, and as close as one could get while maintaining the distance required for sight-lines that reached below the canopy of flowers.

On the dais, alone and with the patient expression of an expectant statue, stood Luna Lovegood, resplendent in purple robes that flowed several feet behind her, where their rippling fabric appeared to turn to flame. Had he not worked beside Lovegood for nearly a year now, Draco would have been as alarmed as the many guests in the seats nearest the platform, who murmured and pointed excitedly amongst themselves. 

The sun was still several points off zenith. With time to wait, Draco flicked his wand toward the office behind him. A newspaper sailed out and unfolded itself upon the little metal tabletop before him. 

_**Come one, come all!**_ read the announcement. _**Could you be Harry Potter’s perfect match? He’s ready to marry! Will it be you? Interviews 5 June, high noon, Diagon Alley. Applications rigorous; decisions immediate. Dress to wed.**_

He would have said this was unlike Potter, except that to rush into folly was in no way an un-Potterlike thing to do. He also, perhaps, had little to go on.

* * *

**Before: Last Autumn and Winter**

He had avoided Potter for the better part of the decade that followed the war—at first, quite easily, through the simple fact of his apprenticeship in the Americas, but then, when he’d returned to England in his mid-twenties, with considerably more intention. 

His family was no longer on the social lists of the sort of people likely to invite Potter to a soiree. However, a startling number of his friends were, and despite his ignominious past, his good breeding and refined appearance led hosts to tolerate him as a plus-one. Therefore, in order to avoid a chance collision, he got in the habit of placing carefully calculated, casual inquiries before accepting friends’ invitations. 

He’d felt quite clever about his ability to stealthily dodge the man until a warm September morning four or so years back when he awoke to the rude and extremely noisy intrusion of Hermione Granger’s owl, which rocketed through the open window and into his bed, bearing the message _**Why have you been asking people about Harry’s schedule, Malfoy? What the fuck are you up to?**_

Fortunately, instead of firing back something hasty and cutting in return, he bade the owl wait till he’d had a cup of tea and a moment to think it over, then responded honestly. _Just trying not to avoid an unpleasant run-in. Useful to know if he’ll be at a party so I can send my regrets._

 _ **Hadn’t considered that,**_ Granger had written back. _**I appreciate it. In future, feel free to check with me, and I can confirm for you.**_

**__** _You share his calendar?_

_**Of course he’s shared his calendar with us, Malfoy. We’re his best friends.** _

The Granger connection had proven invaluable; for another few years, he hadn’t encountered Potter for more than a quick nod when they happened, once or twice, to pass each other in the street 

But then, last year, two things had happened: first, the old Diagon Alley cauldroner had retired, which meant Draco could finally buy this shop-front he’d been craving for years, so much better than the far-flung location where he’d been holed up on Providench Alley; and second, the Ministry of Magic’s Potions Lab suffered an explosion of Communicative Chrysalidis, and the lab and its entire staff went on several months’ immediate and irrevocable quarantine.

And this, of course, led to Draco looking up from his scales one day this winter to find Ron Weasley and Harry Potter in his shop’s foyer, both making a slovenly display of their Aurors’ robes, inspecting the place like they expected ghouls to start curling out of the wallpaper. 

“Gentlemen,” Draco said cautiously.

“Malfoy,” said Weasley.

“ _Mr._ Malfoy,” corrected Potter, sounding like the addition pained him, but too brusque to dwell on it. “We may require your services.”

“No need to stand on ceremony, Potter,” said Draco, who could not imagine forcing himself to call this man anything but that. “What is it you’re after?”

“You’ve heard about the Potions Lab.”

“Word’s gone around.” _The Quibbler_ had hired a magical cartoonist to illustrate the entire process of Chrysalidis contact, which began with the cocooning, and then led to full disintegration of the body before the subject re-formed and emerged, usually whole, healthy, and with skin fresh and dewy. The risks of tampering, were, of course, tremendous; even excess noise near a person during the reintegration stage could result in body parts forming in the wrong places, or not at all.

“Awful business,” Weasley said, wrinkling his nose. “You don’t have any of that rot here, do you?”

“I have never seen fit to make it,” said Draco. In addition to being heavily controlled, it just wasn’t the sort of potion most people would ever _want_ to use.

Potter was frowning at him, shoulders back and arms hanging down his sides, in a posture that reminded Draco a bit of their dueling days. “Most of the stores were elsewhere, but there are a few potions we need and can’t access. Can you... Are these something you can make?”

He flicked his hand at a blank space of wall near the entry, as one might flick away an unwanted bug, and a list of potions appeared there in wavering letters.

Had Potter done wandless magic to show off, Draco wouldn’t have minded. However, that he had done it apparently without even conscious intent, that he truly seemed to care only about getting this list up so he could scowl at it, was deeply annoying.

Draco realized that he was watching Potter’s hand, not the list, and looked up.

“Ah,” he said, glancing over the names. “Pixicide, the Wit-Sharpening Potion, and this memory potion here are all rather common for my shop. I could make them for you, but you’ll get acceptable versions much cheaper in the readymade section of Slug and Jigger’s. The Felix Felicis and Mandrake Draught I have in stock, and the Wolfsbane I can have ready in a few days. This last, though,” he said, pointing at the name Pelluciderma, “is beyond my purview. I’d need Ministry clearance for the scarleaves and hearts of fessel, which are, as I’m sure you’re aware, controlled substances.”

He suddenly had a moment’s panic: was this a sting operation? Was their story a ruse? Were they actually here to check if he _did_ carry illicit potions?

“We _are_ the Ministry,” Weasley said dismissively. “We can get you whatever you need.”

“I... I appreciate it,” Draco said. “But, will you please... I would hate to have anyone suspect that I was up to anything not entirely above-board.” He wasn’t sure what he was asking for, but having access to controlled substances seemed rife with danger for the regrowth of his delicate reputation.

“I can send Magical Storage Facilities down to install you a warded safe,” Potter said. He spoke abruptly, but not impatiently, like the words were a series of spells that needed to be deployed in a specific order. “Sealed, accessible only to you and to us, and able to guarantee that the controlled ingredients have gone into the potions you store there. I’ll also write it up, of course, as a Ministry contract, and have Shacklebolt and Robards both sign off.”

Draco nodded. That would do.

“Good, then,” Potter said with a tone of finality, and the list faded from the wall. Was Draco imagining it, or did a faint ringing emanate into the space around him? Not like how ears ring after an injury, but like a thousand tiny wind-chimes lending beauty to the air. “I’ll follow up in the morning. The things you’ve got in stock—can we buy them now? Rather urgent.”

Draco set him up as Potter borrowed the Floo to establish a new direct-payment line from the Ministry’s Gringotts account. Then Potter and Weasley whirled away with their purchases, bundled into a spill-proof traveling case, in a flutter of wrinkled cloaks. 

*

Over the coming year, Draco had ended up seeing Potter quite a lot, actually. By winter, the bumbling in-house Potions staff had long since emerged from their cocoons healthy and hungry, so there was no longer any need for the Ministry to depend upon Draco’s potions—but the Aurors had become accustomed, it seemed, to the superiority of quality.

“What I like about your Scent-Senser,” Weasley said, tipping a stoppered vial of it and admiring the way its pale bubbles caught the light, “is that it doesn’t make me sneeze a million times and leave me with nosebleeds.”

Quietly horrified, Draco mentioned that perhaps the Potions staff ought to exercise more care in their removing of the lower bracts from the swamp-grass before pulping it, and Weasley snorted.

“Same idiots who blew up their own damn lab? Not bloody likely.”

“Ron,” said Potter quietly, but with meaning.

“It’s true, isn’t it?”

“I, for one,” said Potter, shifting the subject, “appreciate that your Trace-Tracing potion gives a good even glow. Haven’t had to worry about being caught in a raid with substandard supplies.”

“I’m glad my products have worked as they ought,” Draco murmured in sarcastic subtlety.

“There was that time at the manor outside Sheffield,” Weasley recollected, either ignoring or—more likely—oblivious to his partner’s stifling glare. “We almost got offed when the trace was too faint and we missed the curses on the closet. Remember?”

“Ron!” Potter said. “Shut it.”

“What? _He_ knows.” He cocked a thumb at Draco, who was busying himself with wrapping parcels of dried herbs in brown paper for storage. “The government’s a mess. That’s why we need him.”

“Good thing you’ve managed to keep the account open, then,” said Draco. He appreciated the business. He certainly didn’t need it, but the regular visits by uniformed Aurors—even if their uniforms were in a uniform state of disarray—helped, he thought, to dispel the lingering negative sentiments people might have felt about seeing the Malfoy name, even in its small, unshowy placard, displayed in the heart of the Wizarding shopping district.

“We could put a seal in your window, if you like,” Potter suggested, as if he’d heard these thoughts. “Official Supplier to the Ministry.”

Several of the shops on the street proudly displayed such seals in their own windows.

“Yes,” Draco had said after a moment’s contemplation. “I’d like that.”

*

**5 June**

Peering down, it was pretty clear which section of the crowd were wedding guests, which were media, which were lookie-loos, and which were applicants. The guests—a group which included a great many Weasleys and Hogwarts folk, all in robes much too warm for this weather—looked apprehensive; the reporters jovial, jostling for position near the dais; the spectators unabashed at their eagerness to witness this folly; and the applicants done up like a circus of eyecatching color and light. There were dozens of them, each dressed in wedding robes that, even through the filter of the flowers above, positively sparkled in the midday sun. 

Everyone chattered excitedly—it was a dull and constant rush of sound. Draco might go indoors, he thought, and distance himself from this nonsense. _What a preposterous display_ , he thought. Such vanity, _to demand that everyone once again prostrate themselves before him_. But then, Potter had said maybe no one would show up. Draco wanted to dismiss that as false humility, but found he couldn’t quite remember anything false about it.

Then the crowd hushed, and Draco found that though he had lifted his saucer and teacup as if to move inside, his body remained in his seat on the balcony.

The doors to the _Quibbler_ offices had opened. Through them, in the black-and-red dress robes of the Aurors, strode Harry Potter, flanked by Ronald Weasley, also in Auror’s robes, and a noticeably pregnant Hermione Granger. Reaching the platform together with him, Weasley and Granger each pulled Potter in for a hug, then sat in the front row of seats as Potter mounted the stage to take his place beside Lovegood.

Despite the square-shouldered bearing the Aurors had beaten into him, Potter’s stance today was not unlike that of the sullen teen he’d once been. In gleaming, pressed robes, he looked less authoritative than he ever had in his appallingly disheveled visits to Draco’s shop. His head remained still, pointed forward, but his eyes seemed to sweep the crowd, as if he was trying to ferret out evil in their midst and coming away disappointed. The crowd, seeing Potter onstage, went wild, waving and cheering. For most of them, just to meet Potter’s eye today would be a story they could tell for generations. 

Lovegood smiled benignly at the assembled masses. She raised her wand and gestured to the flowering orange trees set in gaudy golden pots at the four corners of the dais. When she spoke, the flowers quivered, and her amplified voice seemed to reverberate from within them.

“Friends,” she began, then paused. “I hope it’s all right if I call you friends—since after this, I certainly hope we will all be friends with one another, I am so glad you’re all here today, on this momentous occasion, to witness the marriage of our dear dear friend Harry Potter.”

The cheers at this statement were deafening. Draco set his teacup on the table.

“I don’t know if I believe in marriage,” she mused aloud, to a few titters and whoops from the audience, “but I have a great deal of belief in Harry. Let me tell you a little about Harry.” She cast her gaze across the sea of people before her—seated up close, pressed against the shops further back, climbing the light-posts and awnings further still. Her eyes drifted upward. Draco resisted the urge to duck behind his cast-iron balcony railing. “He’s a good man. He works hard. He’s a dependable friend to me and to the other people he cares about. He’s funny, sometimes. Not always. He has a hard time letting go of serious things. Lots of people think they know about Harry because of things he did when he was in school, but that’s a long time ago. I love Harry, and I want him to have a good life.”

For the first time since he’d taken the stage, Harry turned away from the massed crowds to look at Lovegood. He quirked his mouth at her in what looked like a crooked smile. It was hard to say for sure, at this distance.

“If you’re here to court Harry,” Lovegood said, “I will be watching you closely. So will the rest of our guests. The process will be quite simple: You may give a speech in which you present your qualifications to marry him. Then, all present, yourselves excepted, may vote.” She touched Potter on the arm. “We will present Harry with the seven of you who receive the most votes. As is only fitting, he will make the final decision, and we will proceed directly to the ceremony. Please keep speeches brief; to keep wrackspurts at bay, it’s of course essential that the wedding vows be completed before sundown.”

Lovegood and Potter moved to one side of the platform; on the other, a line of glittering persons stepped forward, one after the other. The first stepped to a marked space and began to speak.

“First may I just say,” blurted the man, who was tall and broad-shouldered and wore daylight-blue robes streaked with silver embroidery that splintered across its surface like lightning bolts, “what an absolute honor it is to even share this stage with you. With _you_! Harry Potter! I owe my life to you—we all do, don’t we?” The audience roared. “I cannot begin to even fathom the possibility that you might ever wish to share your life with—with _me_ , but—”

“I beg your pardon,” said Lovegood, interrupting him gently. “Would you please introduce yourself?”

“Oh!” said the man, flustered. “Coriolanus Templeton, of West Hindrance. I work in Floo maintenance.”

“Please try to focus, Mr. Templeton, on why Harry ought to marry you.”

“Oh. Oh. Well, I’m a decent sort of bloke. I don’t cheat, and I don’t steal, and I’ve been a Harry Potter fan since I first heard about the bloke, in your court all the way, and then you turned out pretty easy on the eyes to boot, and, well, I’d... it’d be an _honor_...”

Potter, listening to this, had gone red. Draco was pretty sure of this, at least; it was hard to say for sure at this distance.

Draco cast _Accio_ on a bottle of Farsight Draught from the medicine cabinet in the office—a product too readily available elsewhere for him to bother brewing his own. Taking a swig, he blinked several times and refocused.

He had noticed Potter’s tendency to flush red when embarrassed or annoyed. In his shop, which tended to be cool for the sake of the potions, Potter’s skin often went bright for a moment if Draco made a snarky comment—whether at Potter’s expense or his own.

On the stage today, he was definitely red, and his eyes were firmly on his own feet, not on the man extolling his virtues.

Templeton wrapped up, with a final reminder that he would be honored if Harry could even begin to see his way fit to considering the possibility of maybe letting him be a contender for his hand, and the next competitor stepped forward.

She, Draco noted, with the benefit of the Draught, was quite beautiful. Her black hair fell in coils down her back; her close-cut golden robes emphasized an alluring cascade of curves. 

“Selina Frayne,” she said, dropping low in a controlled curtsey that showed her figure to increasing advantage. “Harry Potter, you should marry me because I love you. I have loved you for years, and I am very, _very_ good at showing my love.” She raised a dark eyebrow. “I can make you _extremely_ happy, Harry.” Potter’s entire face was flushed; a vein stood out in his neck. “I’ve imagined it often enough. I’ve had plenty of practice, too. I’m intelligent and employed and all that as well; but that’s not why you should marry me. You should marry me because—” she licked her lip, slow and luxuriant “—I _never_ disappoint.”

“Thank you, Ms. Frayne,” said Lovegood in the same pleasant voice she might use to thank a server for a fresh glass of water. Potter’s wide eyes were staring at something far down the alley, though whether from lust or shock it was impossible for Draco to say.

The next woman, like Templeton, was more inclined to fawn than to speak of her own strength for the position; the subsequent three contenders mostly giggled and blushed; the next, whom Draco vaguely recognized from Hogwarts, let loose an impassioned screed about the continued threat of Death Eaters and the irresponsibility of the Aurors in allowing national treasure Harry Potter to face such dangers head-on; another full-on fainted when confronted with Potter’s increasingly hot-eyed gaze; and after that, in Draco’s mind, they all began to run together.

To think that these were the select few who’d made it through Granger’s wards. The numbers boggled the mind. 

A few hours in, with at least another ten competitors waiting to speak, Draco ducked down to the shop for his lunch, which he’d neglected to eat. He’d packed a tomato sandwich, a wedge of hard cheese, and a ripe peach. To accompany it, he brewed another cup of tea, with which he returned to the balcony.

Below, a pretty younger witch— _too young for him_ , Draco found himself thinking—looked damply at Potter and whispered that she dreamed of learning from his selflessness, that she had always felt herself, too, to be meant for a life of sacrifice. 

For the first time in the proceedings, Potter made a noise. It sounded like a laugh smothered into a cough. “Is that why you want to _marry me_?” he asked.

“Oh no!” she exclaimed, cheeks going the brilliant magenta of her robes. “Not that that would be a sacrifice, to marry you, sir! Not in any way! But that you—you have given so much, and I know that I could be a _better person_ , if I were with you.”

Miserable, she stepped back off the platform to rejoin the competitors behind her. 

On stage, Potter looked, if possible, more miserable than she.

In a field already packed with attractive suitors, the final speakers were notably breathtaking— _at least Potter isn’t hurting for lookers_ , Draco thought—but none said anything that hadn’t been said before, dozens of ways, by the speakers who preceded them. Potter was a saint, a savior, a paragon of men; they lived to worship him; they would protect him, or admire him, or coddle or pamper or defend him. They would lay down their lives for him. They would do anything.

 _Merlin_ , Draco thought, savoring the warm, robust peach. _A mess, the lot. These people are not marriage prospects. They’re sycophants and, likely, when he doesn’t turn out to be who they think he is, they’ll make him feel awful for being anyone else._

“Thank you,” Lovegood said neutrally, as the last speaker sat down. “In fairness to all, before we proceed to the voting, I would like to open the floor to anyone else who may wish to speak.”

* * *

**Before: March**

“Why don’t I ever see you?” Potter demanded when he came for a pick-up this March. He’d come alone the last few times—apparently he and Weasley had decided that Draco was unlikely to menace them, and therefore Potter could brave the shop on his own while Weasley tackled paperwork.

The Curse-Begone the Ministry had ordered had taken longer than usual to develop, as Draco had been unwilling to take the Ministry’s traditional shortcut of dried snowdrops, and had instead ordered fresh ones from Siberia, which, being potions ingredients, required several days’ examination at Magical Customs before they had made their way to Draco’s shop. In the long run, he had assured the Ministry clerk who kept Owling him about it, this would save the Ministry time _and_ money, as fresh snowdrops created a powder more than ten times as effective, and much swifter to act, than dried.

“How _do_ you do it, Potter?” Draco asked, not glancing up from the countertop he was sterilizing after a messy morning’s work with filbert slugs, which tended to spatter when gutted. “It’s a special knack, to ask, and with such entitlement, for a thing even as you _have_ the very thing you request.

“Here I am,” he went on, finally looking over, “before your very eyes. Do you _see_ me?”

Potter, windblown and dripping from the storm outside, stood with arms flung wide in what looked like he was asking for a fight. “Apparently you’ve been in London the last _nine years_ or something, and outside of this shop I’ve seen you, in all that time, maybe three times, if that, and all in passing.”

“Fancy that,” Draco had murmured. A spot had, perhaps, eluded his notice; he cast _Tergeo_ once more at the corner where he kept his scales.

“Dean says he’s been at dinners and balls with you a dozen times the last few years. Ginny too.”

“You’ve been inquiring after me, Potter?”

“She said she’s been seeing you around ever since Cho’s _baby shower_ , which had to have been, what, _eight years ago_.I didn’t know you were back in the damn _country_ then. Have you been hiding from me all this time? Because that’s ridiculous.”

“I don’t care for the word _hiding_ ,” Draco said with dignity, turning to direct a Scourgify at the dusty ledges of the shop’s front windows. “I have assiduously avoided contact, yes.”

“You didn’t think I could handle being around you?”

“I thought it might be uncomfortable. You live a new life now; so do I. They didn’t need to intersect.”

Potter stood stewing. He was in Muggle clothes for perhaps the third time since he’d started running Ministry errands to Draco’s shop—a long-sleeved rugby jersey that stuck rather too close to his chest, particularly with the damp, and blue trousers of a sort that Draco, while he would never wear them himself, had frequently found himself admiring on the men he pulled in clubs. “And why not?”

“Because they remind us of an unpleasant past in which we were deeply important to each other, in ways that were almost uniformly negative. Why dredge this back up? We have the opportunity, now, to be very little to one another: a shopkeeper”—he pointed to himself—“and a customer. Why not leave it at that?”

With that, he turned to the row of storage cupboards and opened the compartment where he was keeping the Ministry’s latest order. The jars of orange powder hummed faintly as he removed them to the front counter, packaged them, and hit the bundle with an Impervius. It seemed imprudent to depend on Potter to think of that, and a moist powder is not much of a powder.

Draco handed over the parcel, ignoring the warm prickle in his fingertips when they brushed Potter’s.

“Will there be any new orders today?” he asked lightly. “Sir?”

“You’re never gonna be just a shopkeeper to me,” Potter said, apparently befuddled.

Was that a threat? He couldn’t keep a little mockery out of his tone. “I’m touched, Potter.”

“Don’t give me that shit,” he said, but there was no fire in it anymore. His gaze was appraising, not violent. “I hear you’re friends with McLaggen. He drags _everyone_ to the Leaky, even me, even though we get into terrible rows all the time about Auror policy. But I’ve never—”

“Seen me there, yes,” Draco said, patience beginning to dissipate. “Much as this will shock you, Potter, I am far from universally beloved. My presence at a pub is in no one’s best interest.”

“We were kids!” Potter exclaimed, and now he _did_ sound angry. Light flashed in his eyes; Draco cast a quick protective spell at the cupboards behind him. “People need to move the fuck on.”

The rattling of glassware made it incontrovertibly clear that Draco’s sticking spell would not hold his potions in place long with Potter’s reckless emotions bounding around the establishment.

Patting gently, just once, at Potter’s upper arm to soften the words, Draco ushered him toward the door. “Move the fuck on, Potter,” he said. A metal tub tumbled off a high shelf and clattered, spraying dried bilberry roots across the floorboards. The bits of Potter’s magic that had touched down onto Draco skin fizzed and hopped lightly over him. “Before you destroy my shop.” 

Looking apologetic, Potter somehow reined in the rattling and let himself be led. They were nearly to the threshold when he stopped and gave Draco a fierce look. “Come out tonight.”

“What?”

“Bulstrode and Patil busted a massive smuggling operation. We’ll all be out to celebrate. You should come.”

“I can’t—”

“I feel very strongly about this,” Potter said, grinning. In the shop at their backs, Draco heard the renewed jingling of overexcited jars knocking against each other. A puff of magic on his cheek tickled invitingly.

The tactic was hideously unfair. “Once again, Potter, when your wit fails you, you resort to overpowering me with your magic.”

He didn’t expect Potter to go pale at this, nor to freeze like that, half-in and half-out of his shop, rain pounding to the cobblestones just behind him. “Shit,” he said, mouth opening awkwardly. “I didn’t mean to—”

Oh hell. Draco certainly hadn’t intended to allude to anything more serious than their schoolboy hexes—certainly hadn’t meant to remind Potter of that top contender for the most painful moment, physically, emotionally, spiritually, that he’d ever experienced. He would have happily never recalled that Sectumsempra, or that blood-filled bathroom, ever again. 

“Neither did I,” he sighed. “I’ll see you there.”

* * * 

**5 June**

Draco scanned the crowd for Potter’s friends. There, in the front row, sat Granger and Weasley, holding hands, their shoulders tense. They ought to be voicing their objections, he felt. They, of all people, ought to be crying out that this sham of a contest could not proceed. It didn’t matter which seven would-be suitors made it to final consideration; not a person among them deserved a share in Potter’s life.

But Granger said nothing. Weasley said nothing. Both seemed to be watching Potter warily—and sure enough, he was glaring back at them, as if daring them to retread an argument they’d already hashed out. Surely they’d told him this was stupid. And just as surely, once committed, Potter would never, never, never retreat from a stupid idea.

A man near the front of the crowd took the opportunity of Lovegood’s invitation to call out a vote of support for his nephew, a handsome, slender Healer who’d spoken earlier about his expertise with battle injuries and his eagerness to tend to Potter’s every need. “Fit as a fiddle!” the man called out, “and truly a bang-up Healer, but he’d quit in an instant, Potter, if you wanted him at home. Sometimes a man wants that!” he said, to the approving crowd. “Someone to make his house a home for him!”

Other voices chimed in next, each encouraging the crowd to vote for their candidates of choice. The afternoon was getting late; the sun was nearly behind the buildings.

“Anyone else?” asked Lovegood, when the last people had finished. There was a moment’s quiet, and then—

“Just me,” said Draco, rising to his feet.

 _Fuck_. He hadn’t realized he was going to speak until it was too late. 

His voice carried, clear and light, over the crowds below to the platform. 

“Is that you, Draco?” Lovegood asked, lifting a hand to shade her eyes. She sounded, Draco thought, rather pleased—although with Lovegood, it could be so hard to tell. “Draco? What do you wish to say?”

Draco took a moment to gather his words; let the people wait for a moment. His elevated position on his shop’s balcony, he assumed, would imbue whatever the fuck he said with a certain dignity, but that didn’t mean he wished to ramble. “No one should marry Harry Potter,” he began, pausing for a quick breath’s emphasis, “for _being Harry Potter_. As you said earlier, Potter’s only famous because of something he did long ago. To marry the phantom glory of the past is to marry into the certainty of present disappointment. No one should give up their lives for _this man_.” Fed by a few scattered hisses from the crowd, Draco tried to underpin the words with scorn, and it seemed to be working; Potter, looking up at him, was curling his hands at his sides. “He’s an Auror, which is, I suppose, a tolerably respectable occupation, and is therefore probably in decent physical condition—but have you seen his wardrobe?” Draco, attired smartly in an ash-gray suit of a slim-lined Muggle cut, felt that he had all the authority he needed to continue his critique in this vein. “If you’ve only seen him in dress robes and posed photos, perhaps you don’t know, but I can attest that Potter’s day-to-day wear consists primarily of Muggle ‘jeans’ and ‘trainers’ and that to call his hair unkempt is, in general, a mark of courteous restraint.” The hisses intensified; Draco raised an eyebrow in acknowledgment. “He’s moody and known reckless and holds a grudge like it’s a Golden Snitch.” 

This last was not quite true. 

And it had been a long time, he realized out of nowhere, since he’d seen Potter on a broom. Those had been, perhaps, their only good times together at Hogwarts—the rare moments when they flew together without rancor, their only thoughts speed and elevation and the hope of a distant glimmer.

“Well, Draco,” asked Lovegood, raising a swoopy hand to still the more vocal element of the audience, “what _should_ a partner bring to marriage with Harry?”

He rolled his eyes rather more dramatically than was, perhaps, strictly necessary.

“Obviously, a lack of scruples in regard to clasp alignment,” he said, observing with satisfaction that Potter’s eyes snapped down to notice the mismatched second and third clasps on the left pocket of his dress robes, “and the patience to tolerate the simpering masses—” The simpering masses screeched in disapproval—“but perhaps most of all, the willingness to change—both oneself and one’s expectations. We’re none of us what we once were—in the war, before the war. While, Lovegood, I may share your agnosticism in regard to the value of marriage, I cannot doubt that a lasting marriage depends upon the ability of those involved to weather change in one other.” 

He looked more closely at Potter now. Potter _had_ changed; of course he had; they both had. He had grown muscle, added another scar—possibly more, but the strike over his cheekbone was all Draco was privy to—and begun, in one small streak that seemed to mimic the scar, to gray. But beyond that, he had—and Draco was going out on a limb here, but fuck it, he knew enough to _know_ —grown more understanding. He was still forthright and stubborn and hot-tempered, but he no longer looked at Draco like he was scum. In fact, Draco was willing to wager he no longer looked that way at anyone. 

Some people grow up to recognize more swiftly the limitations in others; others grow up to recognize the limitations in their own judgment. 

Potter, Draco was quite sure, was among the latter.

Lovegood nodded at him. “Will that be all, Draco?”

“Not quite,” he said, letting a deeper sincerity edge into his voice. Potter was looking at him, now, like what he was going to say might actually be worth something, like it might actually _help_. As stupid as this endeavor was, perhaps he could make it a little less awful. “Consider, when you vote, that you are condemning two people to share the entire remainder of their lives together. While I cannot endorse any one of the persons who have thus far pressed their suit, some are clearly only in this in hopes of marrying a hero who doesn’t exist. Please, choose better. Harry Potter and I have a professional relationship. I do not wish to see him miserable.”

* * * 

**Before: March**

He showed up to the Leaky as late as he thought he could without Potter making a scene about it. He slipped in, avoiding eye contact with the boisterous Ministry group that took up the better part of the room, and had just bought himself a firewhisky when Potter caught sight and bellowed. 

“You made it!” He was already up from his seat and winding his way over, sloshing beer in one hand and the other out to clap Draco on the back. 

“I said I would,” Draco said.

“Come on over. Lemme find you a chair.”

When they approached the long table, Weasley half-rose to shake hands with Draco, then shifted over to share a bench already crowded with Aurors, leaving his chair available. 

Draco wasn’t sure what welcome he had expected from a drunken horde of magical law enforcement—jeers? insults? hexes?—but the far half seemed oblivious to anything but their own shouted conversations, and the nearer ones followed Weasley’s lead, shaking hands or giving a polite hello.

“Good to see you, Malfoy,” Millicent Bulstrode said, nodding to him a bit too emphatically.

“Likewise,” said Draco, raising his glass to her and to Padma Patil. “Congratulations on your, erm, accomplishment.”

“Many thanks,” said Bulstrode. Her voice was melodiously robust and seemed to be on the verge of song or laughter—he couldn’t tell which.

“Bullzie,” Patil said to her partner, “You gotta tell him ‘bout the bust.”

“Oh, shit,” said Bulstrode, braying out a sound that was at once laugh and exclamation. “If I’m telling that again, I’m gonna need a drink.” She took the full pint someone handed over, and set in on a wild and enthralling tale that involved a couple of sea dragons, an underwater hoard, a gang of magical pirates, and some very despondent and confused Muggle scuba divers who had been Confunded so many times, and with such lack of restraint, that they now fully believed themselves to be merpeople.

Obviously, as evidenced by the cackles and affirmations throughout, they were several rounds in, and the story had been told several times by now.

“They’re in Spell Damage at St. Mungo’s,” Bulstrode finished, “getting their brains back. Slow work. But your potions seem to be helping, Malfoy. Healers said the day after they started administering some elixir you made, some kind of muddy-looking thing?—” 

“Likely the Elixir of Clarity,” he said, leaning in eagerly. The potion was often used to treat Confundo, but he’d never heard of it being used in such a serious case.

“Right, well, within a day, the patients stopped demanding kelp and started to eat land food again.” 

“Well done,” said Potter, smacking Draco’s back once again, unfortunately right as he was taking a drink of his whisky and therefore causing him to sputter. 

“I’d _heard_ you were our new Potions supplier,” Patil said to Draco from the bottom of a glass. “I hadn’t realized you were keeping a shop.”

Draco nodded, having successfully managed a sip. 

“I’ve never asked why,” Potter said. 

“Because you needed me to,” said Draco, even though it was obvious.

“Why the _shop_ ,” Potter clarified. “You’ve got money. You don’t need to work.”

“Neither do you,” said Patil, bumping him with her elbow. “Ol’ Moneybags.” She drained the last of the beer. “This round’s on you, by the way.”

“Cheers,” said Potter, waving to the barkeep for more. “But Malfoy,” he went on, more quietly, “I’m no expert on finance, but as far as I can work out, you’re still richer than I can even fathom. Just. _Why_ , Malfoy? Really?”

“You may have heard that the family name has fallen on hard times,” Draco said. “Hard to build a reputation with the common man from within the walls of a country manor.” 

“So the fifty-galleons-a-memory-potion shop is actually a public outreach center?” Potter guffawed. “Where are these ‘common men’ lurking?”

“Outside. Around,” sniffed Draco. “I’m seen, being ordinary. Working a job. No one would trust me slinging Pox Cream and Doxicide down from a roadside stand, but a high-end shop makes sense. It builds their confidence in me.”

Granger and Weasley leaned in, then, to inquire about the shop. Granger had quite a few questions about Draco’s technique, for it seemed that word of his potions’ efficacy had traveled swiftly throughout the Ministry, and then even more questions about his apprenticeship overseas. Eventually he offered to switch seats with Weasley so that he could speak directly to Granger without leaning across his lap. He was trying to describe his strategy for converting international magical weights and measures when he saw that Granger was yawning.

“Apologies,” he said. “This is quite dry stuff.”

She looked appalled at the assertion. “No! It’s fascinating.” She yawned again. “Sorry, it’s just. Well.” She cast her eyes about the busy pub. No one appeared to be listening. She squinted at him, then said, “I’m pregnant. No one knows yet. Ron, obviously. And Harry. But no one else. Keep it under your hat, will you, Malfoy?”

“Of course,” Draco stammered, in equal parts baffled and astonished. Hermione Granger had just entrusted a deeply personal confidence to him? It made little sense, but he was, nonetheless, honored by it. He felt her trust winging its way through him. “Congratulations are in order. Can I do anything for you?”

“Just give Ron a nudge, will you?”

He tapped Weasley’s shoulder discreetly. Weasley and Granger exchanged loaded glances, and Weasley stood to escort her outside.

“I’ll get the next round,” Weasley called to the group as he walked his wife out to a chorus of “Later, Granger’’s from the Auror crowd.

“Perhaps I’d better excuse myself as well,” Draco said to Potter.

“Don’t you dare!” Potter said, pulling Draco back down. “You’ve barely finished one drink.”

And despite his better judgment, he sat and stayed. 

Weasley returned with dozens of floating pints, which flew into place beside the gathered drinkers’ empties. With his bare hands, Potter _Accio_ ed two of these and pushed one toward Draco. The magic lingered on the glass, and, when Draco took it, crept up to caress the skin of his hand.

“I don’t see why you’re pushing for this,” Draco said, trying not to let slip how much he loved the touch of Potter’s magic. “Why not just be professional acquaintances?”

“New era,” Potter said, clinking his glass to Draco’s. Draco—because unlikely though he might be to seek out pub brew on his own, he was less than eager to court bad luck—took a foamy swig off the top. It was fine.

“I was horrible to you,” he said. “For seven whole years, I did everything in my power to make you miserable. The things I said and did are unpardonable.”

“Nope,” Potter said, as if it were that easy, then tilted his head back and downed a good half of his beer. He shook his head. “I pardon them.”

“It doesn’t work like that.” 

“Fine,” Potter shrugged. “Unpardonable.” He let the word hang for a long minute. “And then _I_ almost killed you.” The eyes looking darkly at him were not those of a beleaguered teenager, but of an extremely competent and confident adult who’d gotten by by claiming for his own, one by one, all the things that terrified him. “Call it even?"

Under the table, his knee knocked into Draco’s, and Draco found he couldn’t say anything at all.

Instead, he set to work on that beer.

* * * 

**5 June**

There was a lot of murmuring, especially amongst Potter’s friends and family, and then the ballots were sailing back into Lovegood’s charmed hat. With a wave of her wand, she sent them out again, to flutter in the air about the heads of the suitors. It was clear that the vote was widely split. The competitors angled about in their seats to count one another’s ballots, tipping their heads back to see their own, but this wasn’t necessary for long. Golden ribbons came swirling through the crowd, then one wrapped about the arm of each of the suitors who had received enough votes to advance. 

The Healer was the first to be identified, then a second-string Quidditch player from the Suttonshall Squabs, then a few Draco didn’t fully recall—there were such a lot of them, and he had gotten a little drowsy in the middle of the speeches—and the hot Hufflepuff with a bone to pick with the Aurors, and Selina Frayne. 

The six ascended the stage amid hearty cheers. Potter, meanwhile, had gone from pink to pale. Suddenly, this game must have looked less like a game and more like a life of marriage to one of these—

To one of these— 

_Six?_

Draco noticed at the same time as the crowd at large; there were only six suitors on stage, not seven. There ought to have been seven. Someone was missing. 

That’s when he felt the tug on his arm. It was so unexpected, up here, alone, away from human contact, that he made a squawk of outrage, which drew dozens of eyes up as his own looked down.

Wrapping tight around his left arm was a long, broad ribbon of gold.

“Excellent,” Lovegood said brightly, beaming peacefully at him. “There’s our seventh.”

“But I’m not—” Draco began to protest. He wasn’t in the contest. He had no intention of wooing Harry Potter. He’d just stepped out of his shop for a bit of air and a preposterous show, not to get married.

Even if he _had_ meant to, who in Merlin’s name would have voted to keep _him_ , a former Death Eater, in the running to marry the great hero? Sure, people were learning to respect him as a merchant. Even as a _human_ ; the Aurors hadn’t drummed him out of the Leaky Cauldron that time. But as a _match for Harry Potter_? The prospect defied all probability.

But then, he saw said hero was looking at him too, and the arguments crumbled in his mouth. Potter looked indignant, and confused, yes, but also like there was a line stretched between them, connecting them. Whatever the reason, Draco was suddenly quite sure Potter wanted him on that stage.

 _Fine_ , he thought, giving in and spelling himself off the balcony. No one could force him into marriage, after all, and this was rather a lark. _What’s the worst that could happen?_

Once he’d joined the other seven on the stage, Lovegood Transfigured their ribbons into chairs made of golden wire and bade them all sit. 

“Finalists, for this round, you will, of course, need to answer a few questions. Harry, have you brought the Veritaserum?”

“Now hold off,” said Draco, scowling at the little bottle Potter produced. 

“Oh, I'm so sorry, Draco,” Lovegood murmured. “I forgot you missed the ground-rules talk beforehand, when Hermione ran the first cull. We’ll need you to take this, of course, so that Harry can verify that you’re earnest about your intentions. That's all.”

Draco was thinking of the all the things he couldn't say—the proprietary formulas for some of the potions he'd devised, the whereabouts of Gregory Goyle, the frequency with which his own mother exhorted him to seek a marriage of his own. He couldn’t talk about these to a friend, let alone hundreds on hundreds of strangers.

He leaned in toward Lovegood. Perhaps there was an easy way out. “Isn’t it rather a concern that I’ve just joined in now? After Granger’s culling? Won’t she worry I’ve circumvented the safeguards that—”

“Draco.” Lovegood rolled her eyes at him. “Harry’s been alone in your shop dozens of times this last year. You can’t believe Ron and Hermione would have let that happen even once if they hadn’t fully vetted, analyzed, and inspected every part of you that might be a security risk.”

The lingering reluctance much have shown on his face, for Lovegood patted his head in a way likely intended to be reassuring except that her fingers primarily made contact with the general area of his ear. “Harry won't ask anything irrelevant to the matter at hand. Will you?” she confirmed.

“Of course not,” Potter said, rather hot to retort.

“And what about...” He waved a languorous hand at the crowd. Potter might not ask the hard questions, but surely at least one of these wide-eyed, whispering masses would lack Potter’s restraint.

“I'll be drawing a protective shield around the stage,” said Lovegood. “They'll hear us, but not the other way round.”

So, grudgingly, Draco permitted Potter to administer the serum: three drops at the center of his extended tongue. Sometimes Draco had seen it given in water, but here, on stage, it would be too easy to trick the audience with sleight of hand. Sleight of tongue sounded trickier. Potter was watching him curiously, so as he closed his mouth around the potion, he gave a lazy wink. 

Potter fumbled with the dropper and moved down the line. 

He began his questioning at the other end. Draco shifted in his chair for a better angle. That Healer really was well-matched to Potter in looks, particularly with that single rugged scar along his jawline—not the sort of scar that makes you feel bad for a person, though it must have been a grisly wound once, but the sort that makes you want them with a poignancy so ferocious it cuts into you.

Draco was curious. What would the questions be?

The Healer, whose name turned out to be Aksel Sandberg, answered each question with a mix of gravity and charm that Draco, personally, found rather repugnant. 

“Three questions, Harry,” said Lovegood.

“Right,” said Potter, glancing down the line. His eyes caught Draco’s, then went back to Sandberg. “Your uncle says you’d give up your work for marriage. Is that true?”

“Course I would. Harry. It’s not as though we’d need two incomes—or any incomes. Hell, with your money, we could both quit our jobs and faff off to the Riviera for months at a time. Fuck what that tosser at the end said; you’re a hero forever. You’ve proved yourself. You deserve to rest on your laurels and do something nice for yourself for once.”

“Thanks,” Potter said curtly. “What if I didn’t want you to base your life around me?”

“I could give you space, I suppose,” Sandberg said, tossing his shaggy hair out of his eyes. “I’d do anything to be with you. Whatever it takes.” 

“Hmm,” said Potter, and moved on without asking a third question.

Of the six suitors who came before Draco, only Selina Frayne got a full three questions. Her third, though, was, “You said you’re in love with me, but this leads me to wonder: how easily do you fall in love?”

“I fall in love,” Frayne said, pursing her lips thoughtfully as her big eyes inclined upward, “at least daily. Maybe many times a day. Sometimes it’s a tone of voice, or the edge of a gesture, and you know? you just recognize from that tiny thing that someone’s human and flawed and wonderful. Love is a beautiful thing, Harry. The names of the people I’ve loved could fill ten feet of parchment. Most of them I still love.” 

She paused, and looked at him quizzically. “That isn’t a dealbreaker for you, is it, Harry? Because I don’t think I could be with a person who demanded that I love only them.”

“Not at all,” Potter said, smiling faintly. “If anything, your loving people besides me is an enormous mark in your favor.” 

* * *

**Before: May**

Potter came into the shop just once between the publication of his marriage announcement and the date of his wedding. Draco couldn’t resist making some diffident snide remarks, which Harry, diffidently, acknowledged.

“Despite the generally unkempt appearance, Potter, you’ve grown into something not...” He paused, appraising. “Not hideous. Surely you don’t need to go to such lengths for a date.”

Potter’s posture was one of rigid retreat. “People fling themselves at me,” he said. “Everyone wants a chance to shag the fucking savior. That’s not what I want.”

“How will this be different?”

“A fuck is one thing,” Potter said, as if he was trying to convince himself. “But marrying me? You said it. _Not hideous._ I’m really pretty ordinary, I work a lot, I’m frequently sweaty and unpleasant. I rarely look or smell nicer than I do right now—and often quite a bit worse. All most people know about me is I’m brave and stupid, which are not the qualities one seeks in a long-term partner.”

“So you’re hoping this brings out just, who, the die-hards? the Potter stalkers?”

“That was Hermione’s point,” he said, drooping. “So she’s setting some wards to winnow out anyone dangerous or mad before the event even begins. I expect that eliminates most of them. Who knows? Maybe I’ll have two people to choose from?” He grimaced. “Maybe none, and I marry myself.”

“At least in that scenario you’ve already enjoyed a preview of your love life,” Draco said, glancing to the side as the joke landed in case it was too rude, but Potter cackled.

“Tell me, though,” he said, when he’d picked up the Oculus and Wiggenweld potions he’d been sent for and was about to head out the door. His face was quirked in a smile, but Draco was learning Potter’s smiles; this wasn’t a happy one. “Is this just the stupidest thing I could’ve done?”

Draco wanted, suddenly and unaccountably, to take Potter into his arms. That smile, he thought, was the loneliest thing he’d seen in a long time. He knew it, he recognized its loneliness, because it looked exactly like the wry and quiet loneliness with which he lived every day of his tidy and pleasant life. “What was the alternative?” Draco inquired lightly, tipping his head to the side as if he was actually weighing the options. “Could be stupidity. Could be courage.”

* * *

**5 June**

“May I just say before the questioning begins,” Draco interjected, not sure whether he was addressing Lovegood, or Potter, who was drawing near to him, or the magically inaudible crowd that surrounded their stage, “I wasn’t... I didn’t mean to be here. I was just watching, not trying to be part of this ridiculous courtship drama. For someone who so clearly hates attention, this continues to be a spectacularly foolish way to get married, by the way,” he added, and now he certainly was addressing Potter. “But go for it.” 

Potter glowered at him. “Thank you, Malfoy. Question One: Why do you run a shop?”

Something had changed in Potter: he had, for the first time since Draco had seen him take this stage, unbowed himself. Not that he’d been _bowed_ , exactly—his shoulders had been back, his posture erect—but in contrast to his fresh-pressed robes, his person had appeared crumpled, like someone had stepped on him, just a little. Now, it was as if some force was pulling Potter upright, unkinking the bends and knots within him, making him tall again. 

Draco felt, with sudden clarity, that this force was his own gaze—felt it and knew it, because he could feel all the fiery strength that it inspired in Potter. He could see the way that standing before him led Potter to swell full of his own Pottery self.

“I believe I've told you that,” he said sternly, because he resented the implication that Potter might not have believed him before. However, he felt compelled by accuracy to add, “Also, I like the work. Potions have always been immensely satisfying to me.” He tried to stop there, but found his mouth really didn’t want to. “I also enjoy the opportunities the work provides for human interaction.”

Potter nodded curtly. His mouth was still pressed into a hard line, but it looked less menacing than a minute ago.

“Question Two: You said you didn’t mean to be here, and yet, for whatever reason, here you are. So. Let’s tackle the hard stuff: We’ve spent a little time together this past year.” Through the clear lenses, his eyes sparkled. _Why_ was Draco on this stage? “Do you think we could be compatible?”

“For most of my life,” Draco said, fighting the compulsion of the Veritaserum—and he knew he could overpower it; he _could_ , but he wouldn’t. He was going to answer, damn it all. “I would have laughed at the question. Not nicely. But we've grown; neither of us is quite the person we once were. So who knows? It's possible. And, Potter,” he prattled on, because he’d given his tongue free rein and it meant to run him right off a cliff, “if you meant the question sexually”—good god, apparently he was going here whether he liked it or not, so he might as well like it—“ _sexually_ ,” he ran his gaze over Potter's body, bottom to top, “I have every confidence in our ability to find a way.”

Potter didn’t flinch under his gaze, and, better, didn’t look down or away. Draco had trained himself to hold eye contact; it was a useful skill, if often unpleasantly domineering. Holding Potter’s eye didn’t feel domineering. He had power here; so did Potter. Both knew it.

“Do you have a last question?” Lovegood asked after a moment. 

“Yes,” said Potter, who had been staring hard at Draco's face, where Draco could feel a lock of hair had slid down over his forehead but was opting not to disturb his statuesque self-satisfaction by brushing it away. “Right. One more. Malfoy,” he said, wringing the sounds clear of his throat, “how do you feel about everything? Now?”

Of fucking course, with a thousand people listening and himself incapable of anything other than a literal, direct, honest answer. Of course. 

“ _Everything_?” asked Draco, buying time and trying not to glance too obviously at the gaping crowd. Merlin. Was that Blaise and Pansy reclining there on his fucking shop balcony, sharing a Summoned hookah and his Peruvian chocolates?

“The war,” said Potter, rolling his eyes. “Voldemort. The Death Eaters. Decades of animosity. That time when—” his voice cracked, but he kept going: “when I sliced you open and left you to die. _Everything._ ”

“Broken,” said Draco. Now that he’d let the Veritaserum have him, he found it hard to writhe loose. But, fortunately, the words coming out—they were hard, but they didn’t hurt. They’d hashed this out already, hadn’t they? But to say it now, with an audience—of his enemies, his neighbors, and yes, his friends—felt, in a different way, like absolution. “For a long time, shattered, destroyed. What I'd done, what we'd done—and worst, all the things I hadn't done but hadn't stopped. My father always said the greatest shame is to be an accomplice. What he meant by this I'll leave to your interpretation—but in word, at least, I'm inclined to agree. I will never finish living it down.”

Potter had forgiven him, he’d said. This was all well and good—life, should it be long enough, would have the chance to erode his guilt—but he’d never forgive himself. That was impossible. Every iteration of Draco Malfoy would have to carry that weight, like he carried the Mark on his arm and the scars from where he’d tried, in the blind selfishness of youthful regret, to claw it away. It might warp and shift, but it would always be with him.

Draco was so far inside himself that he almost missed what was happening directly in front of him:

Potter sank down to one knee.

Draco had never seen Potter at this angle. Potter was his height, more or less. Had he ever looked down at him? 

He found that he quite liked it. It made him think things that startled him—not that Potter’s strong, scarred hands would look phenomenal against the skin of Draco’s hips, if he chose to hold him there while he sucked Draco off, because of course there was no question that they _would_ —but that Potter’s dumb, vulnerable bravery made his chest ache, and that he liked that ache a lot, and that he wanted to feel that ache more often. 

“Draco Malfoy,” Potter said, his eyes impenetrable behind their glass lenses, “will you marry me?”

Draco tilted his chin up a little, so that he could mask this moment’s breathing as haughty contemplation rather than a rather abrupt attempt to recover from what might well have been developing into a horrifying loss of composure. He couldn’t hear the crowds around him, but he felt certain he could feel their caught breath, their astonishment—in many, their horror. _Harry Potter is proposing to a_ Malfoy _._

There were other people on stage with them too, yes, alert and apprehensive. Draco was aware of all these people, but only as parts of a distant background. In this moment, he and Potter were alone together, contemplating only each other, establishing a new accord.

“Harry Potter,” he drawled, extending a hand—not as one does to a lover, but as to a person one is meeting for the first time, as if to shake. 

Harry didn’t rise from his knee, but he looked at Draco’s hand before him, and then, looking with new purpose at Draco, took it firmly into his own and shook it. 

At that, Draco nodded. “I will,” he said.

*

Delayed though it was by Draco’s quick detour to Twilfitt and Tattings to change into one of the sets of ancestral dress robes he’d recently brought in for updating, the ceremony was a bit lengthy, punctuated by several interesting but, as far as Draco could tell, entirely tangential discussions of Dragonflea habitat, Icelandic cave runes, and numerous tidbits of household wisdom Lovegood had gathered from the _Philosophia Domestica Daemonium_. Still, it came to an abrupt end just before sundown.

He had been holding both Potter’s hands in his own for what felt like hours—likely because it had been full-on, literal _hours_ , and rather awkward ones as the only acceptable places to look seemed to be at their linked hands or, more difficult, into the bright green of Potter’s eyes—when Lovegood switched topic without warning. “...lobster spines as hairpieces,” she’d been saying, “for their ability to redirect harmful magical currents away from the ears, which are, as we all know, the most vulnerable of our entry points for Incorrigible Fleetshaws. And with this and all like matters hereby named, acknowledged, and resolved, do you, Draco Lucius Malfoy, take Harry James Potter to be yours in marriage, until death or similar?”

Potter must have expected this shift as little as he; when Draco said “I do,” the fingers he held twitched suddenly as if he’d been hit with a Stinging Jinx.

Their entwined hands, Draco had been noticing, were delicately tingly. He’d observed, in his shop, the way that Potter’s magic could sit on his skin and radiate out into the air around him. To _touch_ it felt lovely, and he felt troubled about whether his face or stance or, gods forbid, his own magic might reveal that this lengthy ceremony had been, for him, a long slow revel in the pleasure of Potter’s hands.

“Harry James Potter, do you take Draco Lucius Malfoy to be yours in marriage, until death or similar?”

“I do,” Potter said. The tingling increased in warmth and intensity; Draco for a moment had the odd illusion that bees were swarming about their hands.

“Good,” Lovegood said. She produced a goat’s horn, upon which she blew a few wavering notes, then gazed intently into the east. From afar, dots appeared, then grew, until they were a flock of swallows swooping around the ceremony in crazy loops and curlicues. One descended briefly and dropped into Lovegood’s expectant hand a tiny parcel.

“Thank you,” she said. “You may move along.” And the birds departed, winging toward the setting sun.

The package turned out to contain rings—shockingly tasteful, really, in their clean-lined elegance. Draco slid one onto Potter’s finger, and the one Potter put on him fit so perfectly that Draco could feel the spellwork of it spreading into him, tenderly feeling him as if to ascertain the degree to which it belonged.

“With these rings,” Lovegood declared, “I pronounce you married under Wizarding law. If you wish to kiss, now is an appropriate time.”

Leaning in to speak, very quietly, into Potter’s ear, Draco asked, “ _Do_ we wish to kiss?” 

“I think we’d better.”

It wasn’t exactly an answer, but Draco agreed that it seemed a mannerly next step. 

If bees of pleasure had surrounded their clasped hands, between their cheeks must be hornets. The fractional space of air between the two of them seemed to quiver with awareness of their nearness, with alarm.

Draco turned his face; Potter turned his. Their lips met with a crackle so loud in Draco’s ears that he thought perhaps they’d both Disapparated—then realized that the sound was only in his mind.

The kiss, though, was real, and on stage, and Lovegood had apparently dropped the sound shield, because all around them came a tumult of cheering and suggestive hoots and whistles. People were shouting, too, Draco thought, but it was hard to hear over the celebrating, and Draco’s mind was elsewhere.

Draco didn’t want to stop, so he didn’t. Potter’s mouth on his was firm, knowing, strong. Where their chins came into contact, he felt the roughness of new stubble scrape him. Potter was holding him, kissing him in front of all the world, and best, that touch came with Potter’s magic now churning into his lips, all the way through him, turning his very veins hot and electric. _In Potter’s arms,_ Draco thought, _I could do anything._

As if he heard this thought, Potter pulled back. So, for visual symmetry, did Draco. Potter smiled at the crowd and took Draco’s hand.

“Thank you,” he said. “Thank you, Luna, for your help. Thank you, _Quibbler_. Thanks to everyone who made this happen. Thanks to _you_ ,” he said, gesturing to the audience, and was apparently about to say more when a man leapt up in the third row and pointed an accusing arm at Draco.

“Where’s your _father_ , Malfoy?” he yelled. “Where the fuck has that—”

There were a few good reasons Draco shouldn’t have panicked at this: first, because he knew the half-life of the Veritaserum in his body and could easily overpower it at its currently depleted level; second, because he really truly did not know where Lucius had been since he was broken out of Azkaban, and had said so, repeatedly, under much more intense interrogation that this.

But nonetheless, he panicked, which, in his case, meant he went abruptly cold and still. His father—or the long arc of his father’s criminality—here, now, like ice water hissing on a red-hot ingot of feldspark.

At his side, Potter instantly let him go. Of course. The momentary insanity of this whole enterprise became obvious in the face of Draco’s eminently impeachable past and relations.

“Sorry,” Potter was saying to him, looking it, as he cast spells simultaneously from both hands. Draco felt the _Silencio_ sweep through him, sizzling through his veins, stopping his tongue, as before them, a bolt of red light rocketed forth from Potter’s other hand to Stun the man in the audience.

“Sorry, again,” Potter said, milliseconds later, grabbing Draco by the upper arm and leaning in, ignoring the gasping crowd around them. “I wasn’t thinking. You’re probably fine, right? If I remove the spell?”

Draco attempted to communicate this with a glare. Perhaps he could not do what Potter had just done to protect him—sending two different charms in two different directions at once with no words and no wand; _Merlin, who_ could _?_ —but he could at least shake loose of a few drops of mostly-metabolized truth serum.

He was really hoping his reaction to the chivalric wandless spell situation, which had made his pants go uncomfortably snug below his robes, would subside swiftly.

Potter touched Draco’s jaw with a gentle fingertip and the spell fell away.

“My savior,” Draco said darkly. Perhaps if he was cranky enough, Potter wouldn’t look down and notice that the cure had exacerbated the problem.

“I said sorry.” 

“He wouldn’t have hurt me.”

“We don’t know that. All we know is that he came here to do something cruel.”

Draco rolled his eyes.

“It was cruel,” Potter insisted, “to ask.”

“As I’ve told you, Potter, many people believe, for good reason, that I deserve some cruelty.”

“Maybe you deserve it, but _I_ don’t!” Potter complained, trying to shift his tone to something less serious. “I’m perfect, right? And it’s _my_ wedding.”

“Have you lost your mind?”

“Probably.” He looked over to where Granger and Weasley had apparently finished bundling off the rude interrupter. Dozens of other audience members seemed to be storming off in various directions, propelled by some magic Draco faintly felt but would be hard-pressed to name, all of which seemed to center around Granger.

Windmilling his arms at her side, Weasley was now flagging them unambiguously down the alley, where the bulk of the wedding guests were flocking to the tables laden with fountains of flowers and a grand wedding feast that were beginning to pop into view. “Looks like Ron wants us to go eat.”

“Is that what he’s getting at?” Draco asked. He let Potter take his hand and lead the way.

*

The meal was a whirlwind of ritual foods—Draco was pleased to note that all the staples of a formal Wizarding wedding had made it in, including the blackbird pie and _soupe aux gemmes_ —and ritual speeches, and except when clinking glasses, he had little opportunity to even look upon Potter. Private conversation was entirely out of the question.

Nearest them sat Potter’s friends and a shocking number of Aurors, all of whom seemed baffled by this turn of events, but who also, for the most part, were doing a pretty decent job of acting game. Hannah Abbott scampered off during the first course and returned dragging Blaise and Pansy, who had been lounging in the entrance to the _Quibbler_ office sipping cocktails and looking smug. Extending the table and Summoning a few more chairs, Hannah insisted that they sit.

His friends slid sleekly in. _They'd come_ , Draco realized, _for a quick laugh at Potter after work; they'd_ stayed _for him._

“Draco’s side needs more representation. Cormac's on duty, so all he’s got is me and Millicent, and she’s...” Hannah gestured down the long table to where a bright-cheeked Bulstrode and several fellow Aurors were already belting the lyrics to some baudy Muggle tune. “Sit down.”

“To your union,” Pansy said, so mildly that someone who didn’t know her might not hear the wryness, raising her glass for a toast. The purple steam that churned from her drink matched the deeper violet of her eyes that caught Draco from across the table as their glasses touched. “Draco. Potter.”

This wine was actually delicious. Draco would have to remember to say something nice to Lovegood about it. 

“Draco Potter!” Blaise saluted, clinking.

“Harry Malfoy?” suggested Pansy, her glass making contact with Potter’s.

Potter blinked, then smiled. “It’s taken me thirty years to learn to write Potter legibly.”

“No rush,” Blaise smirked, sipping from his own sparkling drink, which flared bright in streaks where his fingers warmed it through the glass. “You’ve got time. After all,” he said, his hand moving in a languid twirl through the air, “marriage is forever.”

“Let me get you some plates,” Potter said, and as he did, two full place settings appeared to Summon themselves. 

Pansy winked at him. _Draco_ , her eyes said, _you are in way over your wizard-fucking head._

As the table cleared itself of its final course, a cassoulet of fairy fowl and legumes, Potter excused himself to discuss something with Shacklebolt, who had offered hearty congratulations and handshakes with both before spiriting Potter away. Draco watched with a wary eye as the two retreated. Surely this was to do with him. The Ministry wouldn’t be happy about their most famous Auror, face of the department, marrying into the Malfoy line.

A tap on his shoulder startled him out of his spying.

“A word?” Granger asked sharply. When Draco just looked at her, she elaborated. “Perhaps someplace we won’t be heard?”

Draco led her down the alley to his shop and shut the door behind them. He’d seen her orchestrating something during the voting, he was sure of it; and then _he’d_ been chosen. “Yes, Granger,” he said, drawing his figure up to his tallest and narrowest, “I believe a word _is_ in order. To start, perhaps you have some insight into how the hell _I_ , a person in no way connected with this ludicrous exhibition, find myself married to Harry fucking Potter.” These robes were quite nice, he noticed, catching his reflection in the shop window. The gray mirrored his eyes. They fit him. He smirked at himself in the window; he looked good enough to marry.

“That’s on you, Malfoy,” she said, shaking her head so her hair bounced. “I’m not the one who couldn’t resist the chance to spring up out of nowhere and deliver some kind of balcony courtship speech.”

While it was true that he and Granger’s interactions had, in recent history, been quite cordial, such a gross mischaracterization could not be allowed to stand. Merlin forbid she thought he’d _wanted_ to find himself in this predicament. “I was hardly—”

“But it did make things easier for me,” she went on. “I thought, well, if it’s _Malfoy_ , heand Harry can just get it annulled right away, and no one’s feelings will be hurt.” 

_Oh_ , he realized with a cool clarity. _She was under no misapprehension. She never thought he and Potter_ meant _to be married._

“The three-month sequestration period might be a bit uncomfortable, but you’ve both survived worse. And... well, sorry Malfoy, but, you do _owe_ him.”

“So you admit you stacked the ballots?” Draco asked, not astonished at the _what_ , but at the _why_. 

“Just an impromptu whisper campaign,” Granger said, with a wink. “And a very small _Confundo_.”

“So you had me marry Potter just so that he and I could annul our marriage?” He amended his statement: “Just so we could _live together in seclusion for three months_ to annul our marriage?”

“It’s such an antiquated practice,” Granger commiserated. “When— If I make Minister someday, you can bet I’ll be pushing on Magical Contracts to update the bonding laws. Three months for annulment. _Four_ for divorce! It’s burdensome and infantalizing to require a married couple to spend such a lot of time hashing out a failed marriage before allowing it to come to a mutually-agreed-upon point of termin—”

“Does Potter know?” Of course he knew. He’d gone through with it so amenably. He had to have known there was an escape planned.

“About annulments? We’ve brought up the possibility.”

“That you sent me in there to sink his plan.”

Granger shook her head. She looked a little tired, but only in the most purely sleepy of ways. “He wants a real marriage, Malfoy. He wasn’t going to get one here in this mob.”

“He wants a real marriage?” Draco displayed his hand, where the thin metal band still tingled with its new-forged magic. Something more than ritual had occurred in the mutual giving of these rings. He’d felt it in his core—an irremediable shift. He still felt it. “What, then, is this?”

“Purebloods,” Granger said with a tone of something Draco couldn’t quite read—was it exasperation? amusement? distress? and dropped her face into her hands. She did look exhausted. “How could I have forgotten. Of course you wouldn’t believe anything as low-class as that a real marriage requires _love_.”

“Please, hold that thought,” Draco said, sliding over one of the guest chairs from the front window. “Sit here a moment.” He darted upstairs and was back in an instant with a cup of black tea. “You looked a bit peaky.”

“An understatement, I’m sure,” Granger agreed, accepting the cup. “Good of you.”

“Cream? Sugar?”

“No, thank you.” She tapped the china once with her wand, probably cooling it, and sipped. “This is lovely.”

“I’m glad. You were saying, though... about love...”

“It’s just all this _convention_ folderol, Malfoy,” she said, tilting her head in a gesture apparently meant to encompass the well-outfitted shop and his well-outfitted person and the tea and his politely distant stance. “It means something to you. But I want Harry to marry someone because he loves them. Because they love him.”

“Is that your choice to make?” Draco asked, experimenting with a tone that he hoped sounded like friendly teasing and not mockery. 

Granger grinned resignedly at him over her teacup, dark eyes sparkling. “Apparently not.”

“You want him to be happy.”

“I want him to be happy,” she agreed.

“All right, then,” Draco nodded. 

“You’ll proceed with the annulment?” She seemed unsurprised, but grateful.

“No.” He relieved her of the empty cup and saucer and looked down his nose at her meaningfully, trusting that she’d see the little smile that accompanied it. 

She gasped, and couldn’t help but smile back. “You don’t mean—”

Draco nodded, cutting his eyes at her. _That’s right. I can. I will_. “I’ll make him happy.”

The door flew open with a thud. Draco could have sworn he’d locked it.

“Harry’s got a deeply disrespectful _Alohomora_ , you’ll find,” said Granger, who, while preoccupied, appeared untroubled by the banging.

“Sorry!” Potter exclaimed guiltily. “Was it latched?” He turned to examine the locking mechanism, which was, indeed, badly damaged. He cast a swift _Reparo_ and called over his shoulder at Draco and Granger, who were still quietly smirking at one another. “Apparently it’s time for cake and dancing.”

Granger looked thoughtfully from him to Draco. 

“You look as though the prospect didn’t disgust you,” Draco murmured as he escorted her back out.

She regarded him briefly, steadily. “We’ll see,” she said.

*

Lanterns charmed to look like pale-green moths flitted above the dancers, streaking the air with a faint glow.

Draco had thought dancing with Potter might be an ungainly enterprise, but it turned out that while Potter was a clumsy lead, he followed quite easily. In the cage of Draco’s arms, he went where Draco wanted him to go, and kept his curiously attentive eyes on Draco while he did it.

Beside Draco and Potter, couples whirled. Granger and Weasley tripped past lightly, making up with earnestness what they lacked in skill. Hannah Abbott and her Longbottom boyfriend swayed gently in place. Blaise and Pansy appeared to be sharing—or fighting over, or both—Aksel Sandberg, who seemed at ease as a center of attention. Minister Shacklebolt took turns leading half the Auror staff in one or the other of the two dances he knew; quite a few children, up far too late, darted feverishly through the dancing crowd. 

At one point, Draco found the dance had brought him and his current partner, a Magical Accidents agent with astonishingly tall hair, near to Lovegood, who was dancing quite close to Selina Frayne. Frayne dipped her head to whisper something into Lovegood’s ear. Lovegood chuckled and said, “That sounds fun. Let’s try it.”

“I’ve never cared for dancing,” Potter said when he cut back in, having excused himself from a very stiff polka with Shacklebolt. “With you, though, it’s actually fun.”

“It’s not meant to be _fun_ , Potter,” Draco said superciliously, opening his arms to take him in again. “It’s meant to be beautiful.”

“Can’t it be both?”

Potter’s hand fit solidly where it touched Draco’s shoulder; when his other hand grasped Draco’s left, Draco felt the ring on his finger warm anew, as if it were pleased.

The band was covering a Warbeck ballad, slow and torchy, and the dancers around them swayed in hazy smudges of sound. Potter’s gravitated slowly closer, brushing briefly against Draco at the chest, bumping a hipbone, then Potter’s cheek resting, for a moment, against his own.

“Sorry,” Potter murmured into his ear, and Draco had to fight down the buzzing ear’s demand that he tilt his head closer, let Potter’s lips make contact. Maybe he tilted a little. Not much. But he certainly didn’t go so far as to pull away. Potter hesitated there. He hadn’t moved either. “Do... do you mind?”

“Should I?” Draco asked quietly.

In answer, the hand on Draco’s shoulder slid up the slubbed cloth of the robe to find the bare skin of Draco’s neck.

“Can I hold you like this?”

Who could ever have foreseen that Draco would find himself practically immobile from the thrill of dancing in a tawdry public ball with Harry Potter’s strong hand curled around his neck, thumb grazing Draco’s jaw?

 _Fuck yes_ , Draco thought. “If you must,” he said, and let his right hand slide lower on Potter’s hip, which, incredibly, bore forward to press against his own.

Their other hands, too, they found, might be put to better use touching, not just holding; for the duration of the next few songs, their bodies rocked against one another in the center of the crowd, testing the resistance of each other’s muscles under robes. It was not beautiful—nor was it exactly _fun_ , not so much as it was exciting, strange, _overwhelming_ to know that in this moment, Potter was letting Draco touch him.

Draco suspected that Potter had cast some subtle Disillusionment, for surely the momentous sight of Harry Potter kneading two full hands of a gasping Draco Malfoy’s slender arse ought to have raised some notice from those around them, but the dancers around them continued, unperturbed, in their own two-stepping and cooing and necking.

In accordance with street regulations, the _Quibbler_ had put a hard cap on celebrations. At 11:20, the decorations and flowers and lights and cakes began to decompose into dust and float away. Potter stepped resolutely back, ran a hand through his messy hair, and looked hard at Draco, top to toe, before snapping his fingers.

“There you are!” Hannah said at his elbow. “Congrats, Draco, Harry. All the best to you. We’re off for home now.” Longbottom was clapping Potter on the shoulder.

From all sides, they were suddenly besieged by people shouting their farewells. Pansy and Blaise, departing with their Healer quarry, blew kisses from the edge of the crowd. Granger and Weasley had to elbow their way in to say goodbye. Granger, shocking Draco, kissed him hard on the cheek before grabbing Weasley and pivoting on her heel for home. Fast and loud as fireworks around them came the cracks of Disapparation. 

By 11:30, the street was dark and nearly empty.

“I’d better close my shop,” Draco suddenly realized, then was rather amused that the thought had come to him at all. So normal, so sensible a thought for such an aberration of a day.

“And I suppose I’d better find Luna to thank her for—” Potter shook his storm-tossed head. “I’d better say thanks.”

It turned out that they were able to handle both tasks in one. Draco turned away from casting the overnight wards on his shop’s door to find Lovegood directly across the street.

Quietly, so as not to disturb her, he took Potter’s hand to get his attention, and with the other, pointed.

In the entry to Borgin and Burkes across the way, Lovegood and Selina Frayne were kissing enthusiastically as several antique clocks tocked menacingly on the other side of the glass. Their alcove echoed with the sloppy sounds of uneven breathing and wet lips on skin. 

Beside him, Potter’s grip on his hand tightened. 

“Regretting your choice?” Draco asked under his breath, raising an eyebrow to elongate the lines of his face—an arrogantly intense look that served him well in the clubs.

Potter’s voice was strained. “Not at all.”

“Then?”

“I’m just... really ready to go home. You?”

*

The discussion of _whose_ home was, it turned out, rather fraught. 

Potter insisted that Grimmauld Place was freshly cleaned and ready to receive his new spouse. 

“How many of my dead, bigoted relatives am I going to have to speak civilly to if we go there?” Draco asked.

“A few,” Potter admitted. “But not near so many as at the Manor.”

“You can’t honestly believe I still live in the _Manor_ , Potter. After everything that happened— No. I’ve a very pleasant flat in town, entirely devoid of portraits, with fresh-made beds and a well-stocked liquor cupboard.” He scrutinized Potter’s face. “What whisky are you pouring at your house, Potter?”

“I’ve got, what, some White Rat?” Potter tried to recollect. “And whatever Ron brought over the other night. The kind with the bugs on the label?”

Draco shook his head. “Mine,” he said decisively, took Harry’s hand in his, and turned on his heel.

Draco Apparated them into the living area, where he turned straightaway toward the leaded-glass bar cabinet against the wall. 

“Bathroom’s down the hall if you want to freshen up,” he said. “I’ll make us a drink.”

Shifting bottles to make way, he extracted the Phoenicus Fifty from the rack at the back of the cupboard and, Summoning two low glasses and some ice, poured two generous helpings.

He took the moment alone to glance around his apartment critically. Not many people visited—his mother, of course, and a few friends: Pansy, Blaise, Millicent, Hannah, Cormac. Fortunately, of these, most of them—Millicent and Cormac very much excepted—had excellent taste, and few compunctions that would have stood in their way of informing him if any part of his home decor failed to meet their exacting aesthetic criteria.

Potter, on the other hand, seemed to notice very little other than the drink Draco handed him. 

“Cheers?” he said, tipping it against Draco’s.

“Cheers,” Draco said. Any opportunity was a good opportunity to look into Potter’s eyes. As the glasses touched, so did their fingers, at every brush of which Draco continued to feel the hot sparks of Potter’s magic.

Potter pulled away for a gulp of whisky. 

“Merlin,” he said, studying the hissing liquid through the glass. “That’s different.”

“Among the best,” Draco agreed, savoring the burn that lingered on his tongue. “Since we’re celebrating.”

“Malfoy...” Potter started, then hesitated for another taste of the firewhisky. “It doesn’t have... it doesn’t _have_ to be binding. There are ways out? If we want them?”

“Yes, Granger spoke about annulment,” said Draco. He kept his expression neutral.

“Today?” Potter frowned at him. “To you, she said it? Today?”

Draco just raised his eyebrows.

“For weeks, she and Ron have been on about it. It’s like they’ve known the whole time I’d fuck it up.” Potter raked a hand through his hair so it stood up in irregular flips and squiggles. “They’ve been looking for outs since I got myself in.”

Considering him, Draco asked, “What do you think, Potter? Have you fucked up?” 

Potter wouldn’t have brought up annulment unless one of them wanted out. But the way Potter’s eyes took Draco in when he asked this—the way they seemed to consider and weigh every bit of who Draco was—suggested that, for Potter at least, the answer was less than obvious. Maybe marrying Draco, Draco allowed himself to speculate, would remain relatively low on Potter’s extremely long list of terrible decisions.

And for Draco? No matter how it ended, this marriage wouldn’t even make the list.

The ancient grandfather clock—one of the few ancestral items to make the move from the Manor to his flat—thrummed quietly behind them while they studied each other. 

“Did you mean it?” Potter asked suddenly. “Earlier? When you said you thought we might be—”

“Compatible?” Draco smirked. “We seem to get on. And I hope you can agree that we’re both tolerably attractive.”

“Come onnn,” moaned Potter. 

“What?”

If it was possible for an entire body to shrug in disbelief, that was what Potter’s was doing right now. “You’re the most beautiful person I’ve ever known.” 

“Oh.” Sometimes something happens that is so truly satisfying that the mind refuses to take it in except in a slow trickle of acknowledgment. In such a way, it now dawned on Draco that this conjecture of his might actually shake out. 

“So, really? You and ... and _me_?” Potter flicked his hands in a quick gesture of dismissal.

“Did you see the legions begging for a chance at you, Potter?”

Potter didn’t seem to understand. “They’re not you.”

“I’m not particularly adept at begging, it’s true.” They were still standing. Draco leaned closer. “Usually, all I need to do is...” With a tap to his wand, Draco filled the room with music—the kind of thumping beat that poured out the doors of the Muggle clubs he visited from time to time—and the lights dimmed. He tilted his head to look askance at Potter, whose wide eyes and taut posture suggested that he, like the men Draco tended to try this on, might actually be an easy pull. 

When his spread fingertips landed on Potter’s hip, Potter moved into him, against him, with him. Draco felt that the pressure of that one hand could, in that moment, steer Potter anywhere at all. It was intoxicating.

He pulled Potter closer, and Potter came willingly; his body and Draco’s undulated together with the beat of the music. They were so close that Draco could feel Potter’s breath on his earlobe, and the rustle of their robes against each other’s, and then, Merlin, when Draco swiveled their hips to match the plummeting bassline, the whispering hint of Potter’s waking cock.

Draco threw back the last of his whisky and, before he could even think what to do with it, Potter had Vanished the glass. Then their hands were all over each other. Draco dragged Potter in by the arse, which was, even through the robes, muscled and firm and exactly the sort of thing his hands, if they could dream, would have been dreaming of touching ever since they first made contact an hour earlier. 

Potter, meanwhile, had one arm all the way around Draco’s back and the other snaking up into Draco’s hair. He didn’t always like having his hair touched. In most pick-up situations, to be honest, this would be where Draco walked away. Now he shook his head so that the hair would come loose of its band and tangle around Potter’s fingers, which curled deeper in and pulled. 

Draco moaned.

“Come with me,” he breathed.

Half-tugging, half-falling into each other with their unwillingness to let go, they stumbled down the corridor to Draco’s bedroom, where the music dipped lower and the bed beckoned.

Draco was holding Potter by the scapulae now, shifting his head minutely as they swayed together. Green and blue flashes of light swam across their skin as their faces bobbed ever nearer. _Harry Potter is in my bedroom_ , Draco thought, and the thought made him want to burst into joyous gales of laughter, which would very much not do, so instead he put an end to this game of chicken and pressed his mouth to Potter’s.

It was fucking ethereal. 

A magical fishbowl of light and sound and his body touching Potter’s in a million tiny places—half of those million in the sensitive, seeking surfaces of their lips. 

Potter liked his lips. He was sure of it from the start, when Potter’s mouth opened wider to let him in, and surer still when his own mouth worked to the side of Potter’s and across the cheek to the hinge of the jaw, when Potter threw his head back and moaned. And gasped. And at the same time, strangled in that twisted sound that was corkscrewing it way through Draco’s insides, he sounded almost like he was laughing.

Merlin and Morgana, he was. Potter was moaning _and_ laughing. 

_If that’s not happiness, Granger, what is?_ The thought was uncharitable but brief in duration, because then he started to suck on the soft skin below Potter’s ear and Potter went fully hard against him—at least, he thought that must be fully hard, because he felt fucking massive—and Draco no longer had room to think. Draco was going to die, right now, of sucking Harry Potter’s neck and feeling Potter’s hard cock dig into him through two layers of wedding robes.

It would be a beautiful death. The sort written up in epic poetry. 

Around them, the lights and music seemed irregular, as if they were gasping in time with Potter, who was breathing hard and clutching Draco by the back of the neck.

He was. He _was_ making Potter happy, just with this, just with his kisses and seeking hands, and if just that was enough to make Potter this wordlessly happy, Draco could do so much better. He sucked loose from Potter’s neck, landing one more quick kiss on the open lips because he couldn’t not, then slid down to his knees before Potter, reached for his robes, and—

“ _Finite Incantatem!_ ” Potter blurted. The music shut off at once, sucked away into the air, and the glowing lights shifted from those of a lurid party to the welcoming golden of a room at bedtime.

He pulled away. “I shouldn’t,” he said. His eyes were wild and dark behind their glasses; his lips ruddy and bright. “Not with you.”

Draco tried not to be hurt by this. He tried not to let everything he’d just relinquished show. “Would you believe,” he said, looking pointedly before him at where Potter was obviously huge, obviously hard, obviously aching for it, “I would have said you liked it?” 

“Oh, I liked it.” Potter pulled back further, speaking very low and sure of himself, in a voice that Draco wanted to physically grind against. “And I shouldn’t go any further.”

“It’s your wedding night,” Draco pointed out, finding some refuge in his most sensible shopkeeper’s voice. “I’ve heard it’s bad luck not to on your wedding night. And after everything Lovegood’s done to safeguard your luck in marriage, to sabotage yourself would be the height of rudeness.”

Potter groaned, looking skyward, avoiding Draco’s eyes. “I didn’t want to fucking _get_ married in the first place.”

“But you wanted it more than you wanted to back out.”

“I’m a stubborn prick. _You_ said it.”

“Yeah? How stubborn _is_ your prick?” _And how sizable? And how do you like to use it? And how many people have had the pleasure?_ Draco had mostly asked to afford himself another moment’s ogling.

Potter looked right at him. "Fuck off," he said, and dragged Draco back up and in, and once again that broomstick of a cock thrust up against the heavy cloth of Draco's robes.

Draco licked Potter's lips open, and Potter groaned again, louder.

"It _could_ just be another anonymous fuck,” Draco murmured. Potter wanted him. It was so obvious. And he’d pledged to make Potter happy. “You’ve had more than your share of those, if the rumor mill can be believed.”

“It can’t,” Potter growled. “But sure, I’ve gotten around.” His mouth was so hot on Draco's neck; so wet. “Thing is," he said into Draco's skin, and something in the stretched-out expulsion of the words reminded Draco of how _he'd_ talked earlier, on the Veritaserum, "thing is, it wouldn’t be anonymous.”

At that, Draco's fingers became bolder. He reached down, let his hand wrap around Potter, and once, dragging slowly upward, squeezed.

“I could blindfold you?” Draco offered, very near to Potter's ear.

"Fucking _hell_ , Malfoy!" The tension in Potter wasn't magical—or wasn't _just_ magical; it was the physical trembling of a body that was pushing with all it had into Draco while also, for some reason, trying to push him away.

“It doesn’t have to mean anything.” He curled his hand tighter around Potter, and was rewarded by an increase in response. “It’s not the 1900s. We can get it annulled, if that’s what you want, even if we _have_ fucked." It was hard to talk with Potter kissing all over his face like this. He felt Potter everywhere. "And it’s not like we’re either of us new to this."

With a hand to Draco's chest, Potter pushed himself back—not far, but just enough that everything seemed to pause.

"If I wasn’t with you tonight, honestly," Draco went on, talking into the sudden void, "I’d probably be with someone else.”

This was not entirely honest—it was a Tuesday, and his plan had been a quiet whisky and a maudlin mental journey through the now 32 years of his life—but Potter didn’t need to know that.

A sharp brightness flickered in Potter's eyes, and then he stepped firmly back. "Just, I just... need a minute."

"Whatever you need," Draco said, trying to get his breath in check.

Potter flopped back on the bed and glared at the ceiling, his hard cock clearly outlined through his robes, stretching far up his belly.

Opting to permit Potter some personal space, Draco turned to the armoire to remove his formal over-robes, adjusting himself a bit in the process. Then he sat on the tweed wing chair beside the bed, slid off his shoes, and stretched his legs out so that his feet rested near Potter’s on the bedspread.

Potter took a deep breath, running his hands up through his hair. Rotating his head to look, incandescence in his gaze, in his entire aura, at Draco, he said. “It. It _would_ mean something.” He went violently red, all at once, and went on. “To me, I mean. I can’t say for you. But. But what you said today, Malfoy. It made me... It’s making me confront a bunch of history I thought I’d buried, and mixing it up with some recent history, and in all that history one thing that keeps coming back up is that I want to fuck you. Maybe I’ve always wanted to fuck you. And I don’t know what you’re going to do with that, with _knowing_ that about me, but I find I’d rather have you know, blast the consequences, than have you not.”

“So honorable,” Draco sneered, hoping the sneer covered for the way he was quite certain his lip had twitched at hearing Potter say, well, _all_ of this. 

“Fuck you. That’s not honorable.”

“You won’t help yourself to what you want—which, by the way, I am willingly and quite blatantly offering—because you’re afraid it would be wrong to have it under false pretenses. But again,” he said in measured tones, controlling the tempo, “I have offered.” He would have sucked Potter off on that stage, he thought. If not when they kissed—and yes, he _would_ have when they kissed—then no question right after, when Potter, with unparalleled magical prowess and an audience of hundreds, sprang to defend the pitiful remnants of Draco’s dignity. And all that before he’d had any hint what was going on under Potter’s robes. Could Potter possibly have doubted his alacrity just now? “I am offering.”

“You said no one should marry me for being Harry Potter. But thing is, I want to fuck you for being Draco Malfoy. If you see what I mean.”

“Ah.” Draco said, sliding his foot across the smooth bedspread to nudge Potter’s knee as he carefully, deliberately unbuttoned his left shirt cuff and began to roll back the sleeve. “But _which_ Draco Malfoy, is the question. Is it the scheming Draco who squabbled with you at school, or the one who pledged his life to a madman and earned this fucking tattoo as a lifelong souvenir, or the sniveling ruined Draco you saved from Azkaban, or the cultured and mannerly Draco who runs a lovely little potions boutique for the discriminating client?”

“It’s... all of them,” Potter said, surprised and watching through narrowed eyes the slashed, contorted black mess of the tattoo on Draco’s forearm. The ink wriggled under its skin, as it always did when people paid it attention. Draco tried to think of it, now, as a sort of needy housepet, like a Crup that rubs up against every visitor, desperate for attention. “ _You’re_ all of them, aren’t you?”

“Right answer.” Draco let his bare right arm fall to his lap, where Potter could hardly miss the bulge of his own erection.

Potter shook his head in what looked like disbelief. “Do you actually _want_ me to have sex with you?”

“Also the right question.”

“So answer it.”

Draco ran his socked toe along the side of Potter’s leg. “Yes, Potter. I want it quite a lot. It’s possible that I have wanted it since you were just one thing to me: an insolent arsehole who couldn’t recognize quality if it spat in his face.” He decided he might as well go all in. “Among the many Dracos I am, I’m also the Draco whose last few decades’ wank fantasies—and pulls, if we’re being honest—have tended toward green eyes and catastrophic black hair.”

“And you want _that_ , with _me_ , _now_.”

Draco laughed—a full, low, warm laugh that he rarely heard from himself, but that he thought he ought to consider employing more often. “Particularly.”

Visions of himself on his knees before Potter assailed his mind. 

"Potter," he said, "take those robes off."

"Or what?" Potter cocked his head, his voice thick. "You'll do it for me?"

Draco's wand snapped into his hand.

" _Emancipare!_ " he said, pointing the wand from place to place very slowly, so that one by one the catches unfastened and fell back, each disconnection revealing a little more of Potter's body.

Below the robes, Potter wore fitted wool trousers and a tight, soft-looking charcoal t-shirt with sleeves that ended—as became visible when Potter shrugged loose of the outer layers—at the first curve of muscle below the shoulder.

“So, how do you want to do this?” Draco asked, for something to say.

“I was recently reminded that it _is_ my wedding night.”

“And?” Draco stood over Potter and set his fingers to work on the buttons of his shirt.

"Call me a traditionalist, Malfoy," said Potter, "but I've always thought it should end, on a wedding night, with someone jamming some part of their body inside someone else till everyone comes."

"In that case, Potter,” Draco said, in his roundest, most mannered tones, “may I suck you?" 

"In the... _lower_ parts," Potter said, laughing at himself and going red in the ears.

Draco was suddenly impatient with buttons. He took his wand in hand to unfasten the fiddly things. "The union," he nodded, smirking. _Harry Potter wants us to fuck._

"Something like that. So the real question is—"

"Me or you."

"You like my big cock." Even Potter couldn't have missed Draco's inability to tear his tell-tale eyes away. "Do you prefer the thought of it in you?" Draco certainly liked this idea, at which his own cock gave a conspicuous twitch. "Or of watching me come all over you while you fuck my arse?"

"When you put it that way," Draco said, and Vanished the remainder of their clothing.

* * *

**Before: 1999 - 2004**

For good reason, Draco didn’t talk about the first year of his time spent apprenticing overseas. The good reason was that that first year wasn’t an apprenticeship at all—not by any commonly recognized meaning of the term. 

It was homestays, a series of them—in a little town in Nunavut; a pleasant suburban tract home outside of Jackson, Mississippi; an airless high-rise in Bogotá; and a windswept, frigid seaside town in the south of Argentina. The unifying link: his hosts in every location were Muggles, chosen specifically for their average Muggle qualities. One was an excellent cards player, and another could, after a few glasses of beer, piece together pleasingly mournful laments on the guitar, but those skills, Draco was pretty sure, still fell well inside the ordinary range.

There was nothing he could do, his mother insisted, to improve their lot in England—not _then_ , at any rate, with the dying embers of war still burning holes in the hearts of their countrymen. She was imperious with regret. Her failings became the fuel that propelled her. With Lucius fled, she refused to allow Draco to bear his father’s guilt. “I deserve it!” he’d protested haughtily to his mother. “I’ve committed quite enough destruction of my own.”

“Exactly,” she said. “You will not take on his as well.”

She’d had to twist some arms, pull some strings, draw on her last reputable connections, but she managed to finagle Draco’s way into this homestay program. It had originally been designed by the Muggle Liaison Office in the 1960s, under the Leach leadership, to dispel Wizarding misconceptions about the Muggle world, and had hiccuped along in the shadows ever since, exposing scores of young wizards and witches each year to the intimate, match-lighting, dish-washing minutia of Muggle life. 

Draco hadn’t been horrified by this. While he missed his wand, which he’d only just received back from fucking savior Harry Potter before having to relinquish it to his mother’s care for the duration of his homestays, he knew himself to be a person who enjoyed precision and routine. He liked the memorizing of which numbers on the dial were best for cooking a chicken rather than a biscuit. He found the workings of an automobile absolutely mesmerizing, and treasured the weeks he spent jouncing down back-roads in what he learned to call a 1962 Chevrolet Impala while his Mississippi host implored him to, “Just eaaaase off that clutch. Easy does it.” And he liked the Muggles. The hosts were kind, of course, because they had signed on to have strangers live with them—but the others, too, the ones who owed him nothing at all, were generally willing to make conversation of some sort of another, and seemed on balance, Draco thought, quite intelligent.

It was in the last homestay, where he lived with a mother and her three noisy but well-meaning teenagers, that he’d first caught himself looking at a Muggle with not disgust nor faint curiosity nor open astonishment—for sometimes they astonished him—but with some kindling of sexual and romantic interest. It was the intense, bespectacled son of the older couple who lived down the weatherbeaten street from his homestay, home from university on holiday.

Draco found that flirting and dating were quite a lot easier without the clouding influences of magic, and enjoyed nearly a calendar month of trysts with Mateo, sea wind whipping off the Atlantic to toss together the dark and light strands of their hair.

Mateo was handsome and clever and skillful with his hands, and Draco congratulated himself for having made such progress in his own tolerance of Muggles that he could so easily acknowledge, on meeting Mateo, his multitude of strengths. 

Years later, in a new millennium and a darker, lonelier hour, he came to see that there had likely been Mateos strewn across the entire path of his life, and the timing, therefore, was less than luck. _You just finally grew up enough to notice the obvious._

By that point, he was deep in his actual potions apprenticeship and had little time for anything else. On the rare night off when he wasn’t already asleep on his feet, he would occasionally visit a Muggle establishment in hopes of a few minutes’ conversation and a quick pull. He was quite grateful to have his wand back; the Muggles were absolutely mad for these rubbery cock-covers called _condoms_ , which were fine, but Draco far preferred to fuck with the added reassurance of several safety spells.

He didn’t tell anyone, of course; he’d learned how to live like a Muggle, and this had made it easy to blend in. Still, he kept his interactions brief; he kept his torso covered.

Mateo, his first Muggle lover, was the only one who’d seen him shirtless. They’d been lying together after sex one afternoon in the sunny whitewashed bedroom Mateo’s parents, who were both off at work, still kept for him. Mateo had been shocked and curious, running his knowing fingers across the dented white lines that were whiter than the white of Draco’s skin. “ _Alguien te lastimó_ ,” he said, squinting at Draco through his lenses. 

“ _Claro_ ,” agreed Draco, and buttoned his shirt back up. These weren’t for other people to see.

He’d tried to claw out the Mark, yes, but he’d never tried to get rid of the scars. 

* * *

**If you’re still awake, it’s still your birthday**

Draco didn’t mind having Potter see his cock. Even if it wasn’t remotely comparable to what Potter was lugging, he had ample evidence of its sufficiency. His chest, on the other hand—he realized a moment too late, as the clothes removed themselves into the aether—could be a problem.

“Don’t let them be a thing,” he said, a paltry plea, as he felt Potter’s eyes land on him.

Potter’s jaw clenched; his lips went tight; and then, sweet Morgana, he nodded. “Okay,” he said. He didn’t look away. 

_Potter_ , Draco was realizing yet again, _doesn’t look away from me_.

Then Potter pulled him down and rolled him onto his back on the bed, and Potter was kissing him again, bent over him and kissing him, holding himself up over Draco with one ropy arm while the other bent back behind himself. Draco felt a streak of moisture cross his belly as the head of Potter’s cock dragged across it.

Draco’s own hands found Potter’s arse. He’d been holding this arse a lot tonight. He felt like he already knew it as he gripped its tight, firm curves.

“I’m ready,” Potter breathed, dipping his arse low enough to brush one cheek against the head of Draco’s cock.

Draco shuddered with want, but he didn’t believe it. “Let me—”

In response, Potter reached below himself to stroke Draco’s cock one time, base to tip, and in addition to tingling with protection—and shouldn’t he have known Potter’s basic fucking _safety spells_ would feel as good as full-on sex with other people—the entire thing felt suddenly alive with self-awareness, as though before this moment it had been a mere shadow of a cock, as if it were only today realizing all that it might yet become. 

“I’m ready,” Potter said again, firmly. “Yeah?” 

Draco nodded and then gulped as Potter lowered himself down, taking Draco in not swiftly but surely, inexorably, smooth and slick and tight and yes, why wouldn’t Potter mean it when he said he was _ready_?, until he sat fully atop Draco, gently stroking his own enormous cock, which bobbed horizontally.

Draco looked up at him, head swimming with the sensations, and suddenly felt that he needed to laugh or to cry. Choosing the option that felt least embarrassing, and least potentially destructive to the moment, he chuckled.

Potter looked down at him, as from a great height, and shook his head at the spectacle of Draco lying under him, inside him, and laughing about it. Then Potter’s face broke open in a grin, and Draco came back into himself. 

It is a strange thing to find oneself inside of Harry Potter—at once impossible and entirely, consumingly, right.

He grabbed Potter’s hips more firmly, tightened his arse, and started to thrust.

It was a rich, thick kind of a fuck, like fucking in treacle, every movement pulling against sticky reluctances, but also every movement’s sensations magnified and intensified from the obstacles that it had overcome. 

Potter rose and fell above him, still holding the base of his long hard cock but letting the end of it slap down onto Draco’s belly with an improbable weight that made him even forget, for seconds at a time, that he himself was balls-deep in Potter.

Potter’s other hand fell open across Draco’s chest, knuckles obliquely angled to clutch loosely at the lean muscles there. Against Draco’s pale, faintly furrowed skin, the ring gleamed darkly. 

Draco’s own hand sought it out and pressed it down into him. How had their rings not touched yet? It seemed improbable, yet if they had, there’s no way Draco could have missed the temporal bliss that surged down his arm to his heart now, the moment the metal made contact.

“Fuck,” he said, startled into pulling his hand away.

“I bought the best,” said Potter, whose chest, too, it turned out, was prone to flushing in moments of emotional intensity. Scarlet streaked down like rainwater from his throat and shoulders.

“They’re supposed to—?”

“Yeah,” Potter said intently. “Do it again.”

Cautiously, his hand ventured back atop Potter’s, pulling Potter’s hand in against the scars he’d created, and again, with the proximity of their rings, his body went as hot and full of feeling as Potter’s body looked.

“Are they trying to trick us,” Draco panted, less from the tight slide of Potter around his cock than from the earnest heat in Potter’s eyes, “into liking each other?”

“Fuck!” Potter exclaimed, recoiling in horror. “No, I promise—”

Draco grabbed Potter before he could lift off. “Kidding,” he said. 

“I wouldn't...” Potter fought for words, sounded dazed and distraught. “...I would never...”

“Kidding,” he said again, and took Potter’s cock in hand. The angle was a little odd, but quite workable. Effective, too, at redirecting Potter, who seemed quickly to forget his alarm and settle back into the pleasure of himself around Draco, Draco around him.

 _Merlin_ , even if he couldn’t hold much of it, Potter’s cock was good in his hand.

“Wait,” Potter said after a minute. Draco could _feel_ , in his throbbing cock, Potter’s struggle to hold himself back. Potter was struggling to keep from coming in his hand, around him. Because Draco felt that fucking good to him. Draco let go, and let his hands fall back, loose.

Potter, breathing deeply, caught one of Draco’s long, narrow fingers in his. As he slid smoothly along Draco’s cock, his fingertips compressed and massaged the length of this single digit, marking a firm course over the tidy gloss of Draco’s neatly-maintained fingernails. 

A noise—an awkward, unrefined, embarrassing noise—squirmed loose from Draco. 

“Mm-hmm,” Potter affirmed, fingertips running down the sides of Draco’s knuckles, his arse contracting around the base of Draco’s cock and pulling slowly upward. 

This hand thing shouldn't have felt so shocking; they were _fucking_ , for god’s sake. 

But it's ... the thing is ... _this_ was _not_ fucking. 

It was—and he cursed his short-thinking brain for its failure to provide a less bland word— _personal_. 

Potter's hard-padded thumb and fingertips caressed Draco's still pointer finger in time with the sink of Draco’s cock into Potter’s body, which descended and ascended so steadily that the real shock was that any of this felt like a surprise—that any of it felt anything less than preordained.

Draco wrapped his left hand around Potter’s so that the bond magic or whatever the fuck it was would surge through them, and in the ensuing moment of disorientation, wherein one had the strange and very much not unpleasant sensation that love charms were ricocheting off the irregular walls of one’s physical interior, drew Potter down to him so their torsos were flush and Potter’s colossal cock trapped between. 

He had no idea how Potter stayed so magnificently hard with a not insignificant cock up his arse. At least, not till Potter shot an anguished look at the bedside lamp and it instantly dimmed. 

“You use magic to keep it _up_?” Draco whispered throatily into Potter’s alluringly near ear. It really demanded to be fucked with. It did. 

“I guess?” Potter moaned. “Don't really think about it.” He moaned harder at the ferocity which this utterly unrevelatory response had spurred in Draco. 

Potter was magical everywhere, every bit of him, and Draco couldn’t get enough of it. He was angling himself now so that every movement drove himself down to rub the smooth, wet head of his cock over the skin of Draco’s torso; Draco could feel it softly bump over the corrugations of his zig-zag of scars.

Then they were kissing, and Draco could no longer feel discrete sensation; he was in Potter and of Potter and around Potter, Potter’s magic in him and his magic, he was pretty sure—because the rings seemed to conduct both their magic, to draw it and spin it together and bind it around them both—coursing through them too. He wanted more. Oh, Merlin, he wanted all of it, without end.

“Never stop,” he grunted into Potter’s hard-toothed, hot, everywhere mouth, and Potter reared back, the expression on his face at once regretful and victorious and so fucking beautiful.

Potter’s long cock stiffened and hovered over him, jetting a straight, gleaming line of white that neatly bisected, from sternum to clavicle, the mess of other white lines on Draco’s chest. 

Draco looked at this: at the layers of marks Potter had left on him.

“Harry Potter,” he marveled aloud. Potter’s eyes never left him as he came. 

*

“What did you think would be happening right now?” At the inquisitive face turned to his, he clarified: “Since you knew you were going to get married this afternoon. What did you expect for _now_?”

“Not sure I thought through the plan enough to get to this point,” Harry confided in a voice so quiet, and frank, and trusting, that Draco realized as long as they’d been laid out here, he’d been thinking of him not as Potter, but as _Harry_. 

“Why did you say yes to me?” Harry asked.

“Why did _you_?” Draco wasn’t sure if he was ready to answer this; what to say? _I would have said yes a decade ago, or two_? _Because your whole life is evidence of what happens when a person always fucks up for the_ right _reasons_? 

“What you said I needed,” Harry answered right away. “In a partner.”

Draco racked his brain to remember. “But I’m none of those. Not tolerant of your slovenliness, for which I constantly abuse you; nor your disgusting fans.”

“But those were jokes.”

“I _beg_ your pardon.” Draco drew himself up to his most aristocratic look of disapprobation.

“It was the thing about changing.”

“Of all the things I said you needed, that’s the _least_ like me.”

“Explain,” Harry said. “You, a bratty rich kid who pledged his life to an evil monster-man, now own a reputable shop in a quaint merchants’ district because—” He faltered and broke course for a moment. “Because you apparently like being around people now. Because you changed.”

“Because it was a pragmatic business decision.”

“Is _that_ why you said yes to me?”

Harry’s nose was not elegant. It had suffered many breaks. It was brown from the summer sun, and quite near him, and Draco wanted to run a finger down it. So he did. 

Harry closed his eyes for a moment.

Draco let his finger continue up over the new scar on Harry’s cheek.

Draco couldn’t tell him everything; it would be too much. But a little truth might be enough. “I said yes, Harry Potter, to save you.”

“From my many eligible suitors?”

“No, you idiot. Granger would’ve helped you annul any of those marriages by the end of the first year, although the public relations would have been quite ugly. As would the sequestration.”

Potter shrugged a shoulder. “Might’ve been some good shagging in there.”

Draco snorted. “I said yes to save you from yourself. Only a man in dire need of help would dream up so ludicrous a marriage scheme.”

“I just hoped it’d feel normal,” Harry said. The honesty Harry gave him—while Draco relinquished mere dribbles, Harry let free the flood. “Like whatever it was I’d entered into, I could go on with it until ... well, until I died, I suppose. I wanted to be done with big decisions.”

“You’re an Auror. You’re not getting out of big decisions.”

“Decisions about _me_. At work it’s different. There are rules. There’s protocol. There are best practices. In life, in _love_ , the best practices just keep failing me. Date someone until they love you and you love them and want to spend the rest of your life with them—that’s where it keeps breaking down.”

“So you thought you’d just Gryffindor your way through this mess by making the decision the hardest fucking way possible, and let it stand?”

Harry laughed. “When you say it like that, it sounds really dumb.” 

“You don’t say,” said Draco. “If for no other reason that, even if you had managed to magically snag a perfect mate, there would still be choices to make. For one: do you want children?”

“I don’t think so.” He looked over. “Do you?”

“Not as of now. Perhaps my thoughts on the matter will shift with time.”

“Right.” 

“And another: do you want _me_? Still?” He rolled over, leering. “Now that you’ve had me?”

“Fucking _Merlin_ , Malfoy.” Harry grinned sheepishly, eyes and cheeks blazing, and took Draco into his arms. “I want you _more_.”

For a bit, they lay there with only that knowledge between them. The air around them was cooling, with the settling night and their settling bodies. Harry made a single lazy circle of his hand and they were, again, in a pool of perfect warmth.

“How?” Draco asked, after some time. “ _How_ do you want me, Harry?”

“I knew I was going to ask you,” Harry admitted. “Even before what I said, before you said anything except, like, that nobody should marry me for being me. I liked that a lot.” His warm hand traced Draco’s cheekbone. “I liked you. I already liked you. You know I made Ron stay behind on all those potions runs for a reason.”

Draco allowed some sharpness to enter his voice: “So, you knew, before the questions, that you were going to ask me. So why ask the questions?” _Why expose me to that? What were you testing, Harry?_

“Those weren't for _me_ , Draco,” Harry said, heavy brows furrowing. “They were for you.”

“Me.”

“So everyone would know, once and for all, who you are.”

Draco scoffed. “And who am I?”

“You’re great. And you’re _gonna_ be the love of my life,” Harry said. “Marry me, Draco.”

“I already have.” Draco was astonished, sometimes, at the ability of his brain to automatically provide words when such a task ought to be impossible in the face of such blockades of emotion. _Harry meant it. Harry wants me. Harry wants a fucking_ life _with me. I should marry him again._

“For real, though. For as long as we can stand it.” _And again, and again._ “Be mine, let me be yours. Marry me.”

In answer, Draco kissed him, slow and sweet. He hadn’t kissed Harry this way yet, but was eminently unshocked to find that it, too, was something Harry did with poignancy and skill. 

Lifting his face from Harry’s, Draco grinned down at him. “Only if that means I get to blow you now.”

Harry grimaced. “I just... I never...”

“You don’t want anyone on their knees for you,” Draco interpreted. 

“Right,” he nodded, grateful. “It feels too much like... too... too _imbalanced_.”

Harry and his terror of worship. _This is what I can give him. With me, he can live like he’s normal._

“Oh, I promise you can right the scales any time,” Draco said. “But it seems as though this first ought to be my choice. It _is_ my birthday, after all.”

“It’s your birthday?” Harry’s perplexity was a thing of beauty. Draco could _see_ the tenderness in it, could feel Harry wishing he’d known, wishing he’d done more. “You’ve been keeping that from me? That it’s your _birthday_?”

“I assumed you knew. We _are_ married.”

“Married on your fucking birthday...” Harry said in wonderment. 

Draco was trying not to let that become too symbolic; married on his birthday; a new life, a new him. All the lives were him. He’d been the boy, the villain, the exile; they were still all part of who he was today. But fuck it. “A new me,” he said, tilting his head up and back to expose the long arc of his neck and jaw.

“Well, in that case,” Harry said, running a broad hand from Draco’s chest to his throat to the perfectly-fitting curve of the base of his skull, exactly as Draco had hoped he would, “in that case, I’m yours.”

**Author's Note:**

> Because of [Pigsinspaaace](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Pigsinspaaace/pseuds/Pigsinspaaace)'s unending sadness for Draco, I wrote one more thing. Then [werebear](https://archiveofourown.org/users/werebear) made me add it here:
> 
>  
> 
> **A Tiny, Informal Epilogue**
> 
>  
> 
> Upon receiving word, Narcissa immediately insists on a second, _proper_ , reception—which Harry in turn insists take place on _his_ birthday. 
> 
> The grounds of Malfoy Manor are bedecked in flowers; enchanted reflecting pools shimmer under the brilliant July sun. Brightly-colored canopies float like kites high above the many hundreds of guests, who sip iced champagne from Abraxas Malfoy's cut crystal. There are speeches and tears and refined cuisine and a disgusting number of gifts, and Narcissa charms all her guests with the obvious joy she takes in her son's happiness.
> 
> When the sky has dimmed and the lulls in the music fill with the croaking of distant frogs, Hermione asks Draco to dance. "You're a much better leader than Ron," she notes. Draco refrains from commenting on this, but swoops her through a complex series of twirls and dips that leave her momentarily breathless.
> 
> He told Harry, after the wedding, not to yell at Hermione about bringing up the possibility of annulment.
> 
> "She was just looking out for you," he said.
> 
> "At your expense," Harry grumbled.
> 
> "Ah, so now you're _expensive_ ," Draco said, mouthing at Harry's ear.
> 
> "I shouldn't have said it," Hermione says to Draco now, as they step lightly together in delicate turns below a tree full of white flowers that glow in the darkening night. 
> 
> Draco shakes his head.
> 
> "You were right," he says. "He deserves someone who loves him."
> 
> "Yeah?" she says, tipping her head back, smiling up at him. Draco looks over to where Harry and Ron are leaned together against a tree trunk, grinning at them from over a couple of fingers each of the Manor's private reserve. Harry notices him looking and winks. The sweetness of this moment sticks in his chest in the best way, arrests his thoughts, binds him.
> 
> "Yeah," he says.


End file.
